Seven Hacks for v242

All these zips are hacks to b2evolution v2.4.2, have the same path that your blog has (although you might not have a "blogs" folder), and contain the original files with _ORIGINAL in the name. I use these hacks so I know they work, but hey you got your own server and maybe your own hacks so you should examine the files with something like winmerge to see what I changed ... or how what I changed might fit in with your hacks.

Clean up your sidebar

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE NINETEEN FILES IN TWO FOLDERS!!!

This is, in many regards, a pointless hack. All it does is put line breaks in your widgets so that when you "view source" for like troubleshooting issues like validation errors you won't have the entire sidebar on one line. To me that is just sloppy, so there you go. Oh and this one also changes the comment in the top of the file from a generic "This file implements the xyz Widget class" to say what 'xyz' the file actually refers to. So technically speaking this is two (pointless) hacks in one, but the corrected comment hardly merits it's own download.

By the way if you want to use this one you need to do it first. A couple of other hacks affect the files in this one, and are all made after I made this one, so yeah that means this one has to be first if at all.

Antispam for your footer

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL ADD or OVER-WRITE ONE FILE IN ONE FOLDER!!!

What this one does is really simple: it stops b2evolution from using your footer to promote their idea of hosting services and other unrelated crap. Instead it gives one linkback to b2evolution.net - nothing else. Getting rid of the splog links requires editing your skin ... and is up to you to take care of. Oh and it uses the conf/hacks.php file so if you have one you will want to make sure and not over-write yours. There is no original.

Crush Kill Destroy SPYWARE

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE ONE FILE IN ONE FOLDER!!!

Here's what happens: when you visit your dashboard page your blog will call home to see if there is anything that you probably need to know about. New releases, probably bug fixes, maybe security related info. Stuff like that. The problem here is that it also sends a shit ton of information about your server configuration back to b2evolution.

Did b2evolution tell you they would be collecting data about your hosting account? No.
Did b2evolution tell you what personal information they are collecting? No.
Did it ever ask you if you want to opt-in to this program? No.
Do you have an option to opt-out of this program? No.

Do you consider collecting information about your installation and your server without your knowledge or consent to be something other than spyware? If your answer is "no" you're an idiot.

My answer in this hack is to completely kill the call home. You will not get cute little messages saying "your blog is up to date", but so what: you also won't be telling b2evolution who owns your installation and your folders. If you are worried about getting important updates grab the syndication feed from http://b2evolution.net/news.php and be happy.

Aggregate "All" blogs into one

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE SEVEN FILES IN SEVEN FOLDERS!!!

What this does is lets you use a keyword "All" in your "blogs to aggregate" field when you want to aggregate all blogs into one. Much nicer than having to type in all the blog IDs yah? This hack must be done AFTER the "Clean up your sidebar" hack because that one will over-write a file in this one.

Add extra toolbar hooks

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE THREE FILES IN TWO FOLDERS!!!

This is a groovy hack that requires more hacking. I like it but it is ... complicated to say the least. So basically if you use a lot of plugins that make toolbars then you get a lot of toolbars stacked up on top of each other. I didn't like that, so I added new hooks for toolbars to latch on to. That is all this hack does: it adds the hooks a toolbar plugin *could* use. The problem is that no plugins exist which will use these hooks, so you will have to hack your plugin to take advantage of the new hooks. Directions to do that are included in the hack.

Oh and hey this one also works for v241 if for some reason you are still using that old pig

"Make posts" as drafts

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE ONE FILE IN ONE FOLDER!!!

This hack will do the same for v242 that this hack did for v241, which is basically to not "make posts" as published items. Instead it will save it as a draft and take you to the appropriate page in your back office to either 'publish now' or edit as you see fit.

Keep your install folder

Download it, unzip it, and upload it to your installation following the path structure in the unzipped package. THIS WILL OVER-WRITE ONE FILE IN ONE FOLDER!!!

b2evolution tells you to delete your 'install' folder, which I find to be bullshit for a couple of reasons. First: I like my server directory to match my copy on my computer. Second: phpinfo.php is in your install folder, which is a good file to have handy and certainly presents no risk to your server or blog. So I re-wrote the bit that checks for "is there an install folder" bit into "if there is an install folder check to see if seven very specific file names exist" because it makes more sense to look for the risky files than to assume the presence of a folder means the files are still there.

This competes with the 'clean sidebar' hack for the most useless hack on the list. I leave it up to you to decide which is more useless...

This entry was posted on Sunday May 11th 2008, was posted in hacks categories, is untagged, contains 1153 words, and has 95 views.