Thanks to Swaroop, I have my own Yahoo! 360 space. I have hardly had time to explore it but if you want to try out latest and greatest, drop a comment on this post with your email. [Hint for scared-of-email-spam people: Your email address is never displayed publicly. And do I need to add that I will never send you any unsolicited email?]
JD
Update: Matt responds. He says that it was a mistake and I believe him. Btw, as Chris mentioned, it was very unfair that everyone scrutinized Matt before listening to his side of the story. Anyway, all is well which ends well. [And if it does not, it's not end. ;)]
If you are tracking WordPress related stories, you are aware about the recent discovery made by Andy about how WordPress.org is tricking Google.
I really wonder why Matt (the founding developer of WP) did this. Observing all the open source folks and /. zealots, even I know that this tactic would definitely back fire. I am surprised how did Matt, being a smart guy and having worked with Open Source community for so long, overlooked this. Maybe everyone has moment of weakness? I would definitely cut him some slack for this, as he has created some excellent stuff for free.
But, I am saddened by the fact that everyone wants to bitch about how what he did was wrong, instead of trying to spend some time on finding why he did it and what could we do to fix the original problem i.e. it’s costly to maintain WordPress project. Everyone is suggesting that Matt would have done better if he had asked for Donations, I am not sure if donations are the answer. Remember, 6A guys received an average of 38 cents as donation. I don’t have any particular answer, do you?
JD
If you are a desi blogger in US and are jealous of all the desi bloggers meet happening in Mumbai and Bangalore and how we don’t have one in US, here’s your chance to attend one in New York. Idea originated on Seshu’s blog conceived by Kaushik, and Sonal has a great write up on who all is going to be present. So what are you waiting for? RSVP now!
JD
Everyone (I mean all bloggers) knows what Technorati is about. But I guess few know about Blogdigger. I came to know about this service from Christopher. I have been using both the services for some time now and here
Update:Removed unnecessary comment about Russell’s post
I have always liked it when Robert Scoble calls his readers as ’smart’.
Yesterday, Robert linked to ‘Building a Better Blog’ post by Brian. May I add one more item to the list.
11. Respond and Respect to ideas/opinions of your blog readers. 
JD
I didn’t know I will be breaking WordPress plugins by renaming the wp-admin folder.
Anyway, I installed Spam Karma plugin only to realize that it assumes the admin folder to be ‘wp-admin’.
Obviously, plugin didn’t work as expected because I have renamed wp-admin folder.
Though fixing the plugin was simple. I modified spam-karma.php file to use ‘admin_folder’ setting and plugin worked without any problems and started eating boat load of ‘poker’ spam I have been receiving!
So if you have used my script to rename wp-admin folder and wants a working Spam Karma plugin, you should download the modified spam-karma.php.
Btw, if you are using any other plugin which breaks upon renaming wp-admin folder, mail me at dkjariwala NO SPAM at gmail dot com. I will try my level best to fix the plugin.
JD
Whew! Yesterday, I posted about renaming my WordPress Admin Folder. Today, I completed the installation script which can help anyone rename ‘wp-admin’ folder of their WordPress installation.
I have tested the script extensively on my Windows Web Server. It will be great if someone can test it on Linux box.
Btw, idea behind renaming ‘wp-admin’ folder is to take a step towards securing your WordPress installation.
Right now, a cracker can easily identify your WordPress Admin site.
[If your WordPress blog URL is http://myblog.com, Your Admin Site URL is http://myblog.com/wp-admin/ ]
So a cracker may launch a dictionary attack to hack in to your blog.
I would like to emphasize that renaming your admin folder is not an end to securing your WordPress installation. You should use strong passwords. You should rename the default ‘admin’ account. Access Admin site over SSL, if possible.
Anyway, you can download script as a ZIP file here. [There is a README file inside which should guide you through the process.]
Here is the screenshot of the script:
Let me know if this script works for you. Make sure to contact me, in case you find any bugs.
Enjoy!
JD
UPDATE:
This script can be used only with WordPress v. 1.2.2.
Using it with any other version might break your WordPress installation.
Go to following URL -> http://jdk.phpkid.org/wp-admin/
Yeah, I know that it doesn’t exist. This, despite the fact that my blog is running WordPress!
Acting paranoid, I have changed my WP Admin URL (or say Folder) to something other than default. (To prevent possible dictionary attacks)
I should add that it’s not a mindless hack. I have changed Admin URL systematically, keeping changes to minimum and logical.
It took me 2 hours to find and replace all hard coded references to ‘wp-admin’, test all the changes to make sure that I have not broken anything.
I am currently in process of writing an ‘installer’ script, which will allow any WP author to change their Admin folder. Keep watching this space!
JD
Thanks to Harris, I got access to my old MySQL database and imported all the older entries to this blog. Though these older entries have nothing significant, I think it lets others know that I started blogging as early as August 2003!
Today morning, I had decided that I will get my blog running tonight and I was thinking about what I should be writing on my blog which will be interesting to other geeks like me. I was also thinking about how can I drive traffic to my blog. What could be the better way to get traffic than getting scoblized? As Christopher has mentioned, first link from Rober Scoble is free. So I was wondering about what to write to him for requesting the first free link.
So after setting up my blog today evening, I made this post ‘Google and Trust’ as a follow up to Google Blog entry. I thought I will mail about this entry to Robert and he would probably give me a link on his linkblog. And guess what, Robert immediately replied by telling me that he was already reading that entry [Thanks to Technorati]! In next 5 mins, I see that he has scoblized me! Thanks!
As Gaurav says in his post, You aren’t a true geek-blogger until you get Scoblized!