New Stars!
Introducing “kk Star Ratings”.
OK, so I’m not entirely sold on this one yet, but it’s not the bloated abandonware we were using before. I haven’t fully examined the code to see if it messes with the privacy policy, but so far it looks very kosher.
Things I like about it:
1. It just works! (No short codes or modifying themes to make it work.)
2. I can upload different images if I want! (Instead of stars, how about sandwiches? OK, maybe not…)
3. It supports ten stars! (Or any reasonable number.)
4. It’s got hover tips! (Hover over a stars to see what they say!)
5. Much, much smaller than GD Star Rating.
6. It’s free as in beer. (Not a crippleware advertisement for their “pro” version.)
Things I’m not too thrilled about:
1. I have no idea how it works yet. (For all I know it could melt my database.)
2. There is no way to see who is voting. (Yes Michigan and Minnesota, I could see your IP addresses and how you were voting under the old system.)
3. No way to import GD Star Rating data. (Oh well.)
4. The author hasn’t updated it in a while. (So it might be abandonware after all.)
There’s a silver lining to the last one. Since this plugin is so much smaller, I might be able to wrap my head around what it’s doing and how it functions. Then if I’m lucky I might just be able to rewrite it to suit my needs. I actually did that with the plugin that allows these side posts. I rewrote someone else’s code, and now it’s mine.
Anti-Scraping Plugin
I also wanted to mention there’s a plugin that I’m trying out in order to combat the content scraping bots. If you ask for pages too fast it will request that you solve a captcha to prove that you’re human. I really doubt that this plugin is going to be around much longer, but if you see the captcha, I’m sorry about that. Don’t freak. Just type it in, and it should leave you alone after that. Um, yeah… That didn’t last long.
OK, so there you go. Feel free to rate the jokes again, and let me know if you have any other problems or concerns.
Pax,
-f2x
