I remember Neil Turner publishes a list of his blog’s most frequent commenters each year, and I being the copycat I am decided to do the same.

I realised that you can’t do this in WordPress without having to mess on installing a widget or doing a SQL query. I decided to download the WordPress Top Commenters Plugin/Widget, but wishing to produce a one time list only I decided to extract the SQL query held in this GPL script.

Anyhow, the MySQL query is:


SELECT comment_author, comment_author_url, comment_author_email, comment_post_ID, COUNT( comment_ID ) AS total_comments
FROM wp_comments
WHERE comment_approved = '1'
GROUP BY comment_author
ORDER BY total_comments DESC


And to honour our most frequent commenters (bear in mind if you’ve posted from different names unless I see, they won’t be merged together)

Number 1 is Azhar, who’s made 72 comments here. He is followed by Sarah who has made 57. techchick comes next making 21 comments in total from the names techchick and dd. We then have Ambiguous Wanderer, who hasn’t commented here in quite a while, but once was a regular commenter making 11 comments. There are many more commenters I’d like to thank, but frankly there are too many!

As a blogger, I love comments. Its nice to know that you are not only being read but that people are thinking about your writing.

Tags: wordpress, mysql

For a long time now, I’ve wanted to develop a WordPress theme.

I’ve learned all about The Loop, which is the key part of any theme, and I created a simple test theme.

Basically, I’ve decided to start work on my first theme which is called Sketch. The theme will be sketched by me and I will then scan in the images. I think the theme will start as a single column theme, but may evolve into a two column theme.

I’m planning to release a proof of concept in the next few weeks, but as this is my first proper theme it may take me some time!

Can I have your thoughts?

Tags: WordPress, WordPress themes, design, web design, web development

WordPress 2.0.2 has been released. It has a few security and bug fixes and is the usual 3-minute upgrade.

The security fixes in question are XSS issues, which haven’t been announced in detail, WordPress says this is different to some issues raised on mailing lists (which weren’t actual security problems or simply false).

You can download the latest build as a tarball here. The development blog has a little more detail.

Tags: wordpress, blog, blogs, security

Thousands (if not millions) of bloggers use WordPress, including me. WordPress comes with a fairly nice admin panel, just what most bloggers realise it can be customised.

Currently, I’m using an admin theme which makes my admin panel look like something from OS X. I’m currently using the WP Tiger Administration theme, which is available from orderedlist.com. All other WordPress admin themes are available on the Codex on this page.

Tags: wordpress, web design, web development, blogging

I’ve switched from MovableType to WordPress today, as I fancied some more templates to use. The transition wasn’t as easy as it should have been, I ran into various problems. Most of these weren’t due to WP itself, but me.

The main, and the only one I haven’t resolved, is the import of comments. This should’ve been done automatically, but as you may have noticed, it wasn’t. I’ve posted a message on the WordPress Support Forum, and you can view it here. If anyone knows how to fix it, please reply either here or there. Ah, they are there, just need approving! Duh!
Other problems included redirecting RSS and Atom feeds, however this was fixed with some simple .htaccess.

I’m still getting use to the template system and I am finding it hard to find where to put my Google adverts. if any other users of WP can tell me, I’d once again really appreciate it.

I am extremely impressed with WP, and the user interface is much nicer than the last time I considered it (1.5.2). Oh, and I love the Ajax and dynamic templates!

And yes, I got chosen as a BlogMad beta tester!