Trunk Media

Allowing tags in Word Press Profiles or comments

16 July 2009

Word Press adds a submission filter to user profiles before data is stored in the database. So the first thing you need to do is remove this filter. You can do this by adding this line to your themes function.php file:

remove_filter('pre_user_description', 'wp_filter_kses');

However, there is a good reason why that was there. That’s to encourage strong security and not allow your users to cross-site script you. Never trust your users, never. So, why not just allow some tags instead? You can do this with the following code:

$allowedtags = array('br' => array(),'p' => array());

So delete that remove_filter line and replace it with the above line. Adjust for the tags that you want to allow. Have a look at your “wp-includes/kses.php” file to see how to organise that variable to allow attributes for each tag you allow. That way you can keep your security whilst allowing for some flexibility. Win – win.

Hat-tip to Adam at Blog Ingenuity where the remove_filter idea came from.

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Opera in demand as a Netbook Operating System?

12 July 2009

Google have finally announced their much anticipated Operating System: Chrome OS. The intention it seems, is as I largely anticipated in Google’s first blow in the OS war is Chrome becomes the operating system by having a minimal linux kernal that boots straight into Chrome. You don’t need big hard drives anymore, minimal flash drives and maximum internet connectivity. So now your notebook is a browser, it doesn’t run a browser.

This begs the question though, where is the competition? I can’t see Microsoft bending over to make Internet Explorer 10 Operating System, and while possible, they won’t bend Windows Mobile. In fact I think they’ll paint this as a dead duck and slowly try and change the game back to themselves. But, in the same way Yahoo and Microsoft, with Live and now Bing, have been unsuccessfully fighting Google at their search engine game, some one will have to take on this new source of revenue.

Let’s not forget that revenue is what this is all about. Netbooks are the biggest growing section of computers at the moment and if you can define the market then you own the game. Currently netbooks are thought of as small laptops. If Google can define them as a whole new product, a web window, with it’s own image in consumers mind, then they’re leading.

So, where does the competition come from? Well the subject probably gave it away. Opera, the browser & software company, has stayed fiercely independant from day one. It’s tried and true and maintains a respectable 1-3% browser share (up to 25% in some countries). It’s already tied in nicely with Nokia as it supplies their mobile browser, Nintendo as the browser on the Wii and DSi and it has a few other useful industry ties. It’s been around since 1996 and so has a solid business model.

These qualities make it ideally suited as a Netbook Operating System in competition with Google’s Chrome OS. The only factor preventing them from doing so directly themselves is that Google is one of their main sources of revenue. Google pays Opera for searches that come from Opera’s built in Google search bar. However this wouldn’t prevent someone like Yahoo, Nokia, Nintendo or Asus from licensing the Opera Browser software to build a Netbook OS on. Indeed if the business model was strong enough, Opera could end their tie with Google and go it alone.

The other obvious competition is Open Source. Linux and Firefox would make a tasty combination. However the same problems which plague all large scale Open Source movements, too many cooks making momentum hard to build, would likely mean that it would never create any serious competition until the market is well and truely defined. I’d loved to be proved wrong however.

I’d like to think that behind the scenes Asus, with their eee PC, and Opera were ready to launch their Netbook OS and trump Google before Google becomes the Microsoft of the new millenium.

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