If there’s one phrase guaranteed to be wasted on the search engines (with 233 million results!), it’s the title of this post. Nonetheless, I’m using it for a simple reason – I don’t like it.

Now I like WordPress, I do – but when I get a new blog put up, and spend an hour or so tweaking it the way I want, then standing back and admiring my personalized site on the Internet, I definitely do NOT think of it as ‘just’ another blog. It’s mine, my efforts, and …

On one of my other blogs I post a lot of source code – code that others can copy and use. And sometimes it can be a chore – until now.

For quite some time I’ve used the old fashioned way of adding code – work in the HTML editor, the switch to the Visual editor and paste in code so that it formats it “HTML safe” (like changing the test ‘less than’ in code from < to &lt;)

But with a new plugin, my code can be quickly formatted …

You put a plugin on your WordPress blog, and soon your site is hacked and defaced – coincidence?

I’ve talked in the past of the dangers of using ‘just any’ theme out there, and of course you should always update your blog as soon as a new security problem is fixed.

But are plugins an issue?

Now I’m not reporting about a specific plugin here, one that is doing bad things. However, the potential IS there, and here’s some reasons why:

A plugin, when activated, has access to all …

If you run a blog, you’ve got them – spam comments.

They are the comments like ‘like your blog’, or ‘bookmarked it’, or the more obvious ones with a quick comment before a page of links: ‘enjoyed your site (link to viagra) (link to porn) (link to cialis) (link to porn) etc’,

Your definition of spam comments may vary, but mine is very simple:

If they didn’t write something relevant to the blog post they commented on, it’s spam.

If I’m talking about a plugin, it doesn’t matter if they …

It’s true – FaceBook is moving from PHP to compiled PHP – with a performance gain of about 50% over PHP.

The move, using an in-house compiler program, HopHop, takes the original PHP code and translates it to C++ code, with then can be compiled and run on the Web server as a program.

As another benefit, FaceBook has released the HipHop compiler as Open Source, meaning anyone can convert/compile their PHP code.

C++, a language that allows very fast low-level access to computer hardware, is traditionally preferred for fast …