Brainspill

MAJOR Update, May 11, 2010:

I’ve pretty well ended support of this. I’m not intentionally avoiding emails or comments, I’m just out of time and need to make you aware there’s a better way.

I’d like to encourage you *not* to use the WP-Password Plugin. Here’s why: It doesn’t protect items in feeds, it can be broken by future wordpress versions, it doesn’t protect media/videos/images in your feeds (only pages powered by WP), and at last check, changing WP to do what I want the plugin to do really jeopardizes it’s security of all other things WP. I just don’t want to do that to you.

Instead, I recommend using .htaccess to protect the directories you want people to see. Here’s a good tutorial on it: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess3.shtml

If I am going to do anything else with the plugin, it will be a re-write to help people create their own .htaccess rules.

NOTE: There’s a newer version of this plugin than this page contains. See WordPress Password 0.6.1.

The other day I got asked if there was a way to password protect a WP blog where the author didn’t have access to .htaccess, didn’t want to create users, send/remind them of their passwords, or manage post security levels. “I just wanna password protect the damn thing. Is that so hard?” Well, at the time, yes. It was. But not anymore!

Continue reading “The WordPress Password Plugin”

I’m easily entertained, and (I think) creative about the stories my son and daughter get when they ask for a story before bed. So I’m storing some of them for recycling on my grandkids someday.

My wife laid out a few rules about bedtime stories I try to adhere to… in my own way.

1. Bedtime stories must be short.
2. Bedtime stories are quiet.
3. Bedtime stories aren’t exciting, and involve the protaganist sleeping all night long in their own bed.

1 out of 3 isn’t bad.

Pink Baby and a Bunch Of Monkeys:

Once upon a time, Pink Baby* was hanging out in the jungle, up in a tree.

And a bunch of monkeys came by!

The monkeys were eating coconuts, and Pink Baby started crying.

“Wah, wah wah! I want a coconut! Wah wah wah!” It was really quite annoying.

Of course, the monkeys didn’t understand Pink Baby. So she cried and cried, while they sat around, passing each other coconuts to eat, chattering loudly and watching her cry.

Finally, a nice, pretty Momma-monkey came over to Pink Baby, and picked her up. Pink Baby stopped crying as the gentle Momma-monkey looked softly in her eyes, like she wanted to help Pink Baby.

WHACK!* The Momma-monkey bonked Pink Baby on the head, and Pink Baby slept for 3* days.

• Pink Baby is my daughter’s 2nd or 3rd favorite doll. She’s not as desirable as Sally or “Baby of my baby”, but this story has made her famous around bedtime.
• “Whack!” was accompanied by Daddy head-butting Pink Baby unexpectedly. Note: laughing children are hard to get to sleep. Children who imitate Daddy get headaches.
• When my daughter retells this story, 3 days seems too short. So she substitutes 49.

At the end of a contractor’s brief term at our company, a co-worker from another department touchingly remarked,

“I’m really going to miss what’s-his-name.”