Moving to a new server · 2008-05-20 07:57 by Wladimir Palant
My issues with adblockplus.org didn’t get magically resolved. While Netdepot was able to reactivate the domain once the performance issues were resolved, they didn’t feel like overlooking my exorbitant traffic use (>120 GB on an account with 10 GB traffic limit) any more. At which point it is time to say goodbye to Netdepot who generously provided me with free hosting for the past seven years and always helped me patiently with my issues. For a project of this size, it is better not to rely on somebody’s good will any more.
Dear authors of ad blocking software · 2008-05-09 10:56 by Wladimir Palant
I know that there is lots of different ad blocking software out there, for browsers other than Firefox or even independent of any browser. Some of these programs can use the same filter subscriptions that Adblock Plus offers, and some even use EasyList and/or other Adblock Plus subscriptions by default. And I don’t see a problem with that — as long as they do it in a nice way. However, I do have a problem when bugs in those ad blocking solutions overload my server.
Status update on adblockplus.org · 2008-04-02 13:31 by Wladimir Palant
Apparently, one of the scripts used by adblockplus.org was putting considerable load on the server (actually tiny load but it was invoked every time somebody downloaded EasyList). Unfortunately, the provider didn’t communicate that to me so that I didn’t know of any load issues until the server got overloaded yesterday and the provider disabled adblockplus.org. The problem is now fixed and the server load is acceptable again. However, I will probably still have to move to a different server — NetDepot isn’t comfortable sponsoring hosting for a project of this size.
Upgraded to Textpattern 4.0.6 · 2008-03-17 22:09 by Wladimir Palant
Yet another Textpattern upgrade (yes, I am slow), and again I have to expect that it will break something. Textpattern developers don’t seem to have a concept of stable versions and change the already fragile markup module with every minor version. So if you notice something odd on this site, it is probably just broken because of this upgrade — please tell me then.
Anti-spam protection in the comments · 2007-02-05 11:22 by Wladimir Palant
A few days ago this blog was hit by the first automated comment spam attack since I installed it. I stopped the immediate attack by banning the spammer’s email address, but now I added proper anti-spam protection similar to what is used in the forum to prevent the same thing from happening again. If you notice any issues adding comments please send me a mail.
Adblock Plus internals documented · 2006-12-04 17:57 by Wladimir Palant
I finally came to extending the Adblock Plus internals section of the FAQ. So if you need an explanation about which filters are faster and why or how often Adblock Plus really downloads subscriptions — that’s where you look. It also explains how blocking of addresses or element hiding work internally and gives some tips for extension developers.
What should happen to the mailing list? · 2006-11-17 01:24 by Wladimir Palant
I am seriously considering killing Adblock Plus mailing list. It receives several spam mails every day that I have to remove from the queue. The real traffic on the mailing list is very low if compared to what I get as Bugzilla reports, blog comments or private mails (and I don’t want to even try comparing it to the forum traffic).
Upgraded to Textpattern 4.0.4 · 2006-11-05 22:05 by Wladimir Palant
Textpattern 4.0.4 has been released and now I upgraded this site. RSS encoding issues have been fixed so that I could drop one of my patches — good. Textpattern now has what looks like decent support for the Last-Modified header, yet it shows the date when anything has been changed anywhere on the server — could be better. Some forms will probably need to be changed, I already had to tweak the comments display. But what I am mostly worried about are the changes to the Textile markup module which is the most fragile part of the whole application. Right now the HTML code of the pages is cached but once I start editing them I’ll probably have to fight invalid markup again. Please watch out for anything on this site that isn’t working/showing up as it should and drop me a mail if you notice something.
Deutsche Übersetzung von adblockplus.org endlich (fast) komplett · 2006-09-01 15:28 by Wladimir Palant
For those not speaking German: this is the announcement that the German translation of adblockplus.org is finally complete.
Eine gute Nachricht für alle deutschsprachigen Besucher von adblockplus.org: die deutsche Version der Seite ist endlich komplett. Ausnahmen sind lediglich die Dokumentation der nsIAdblockPlus-Schnittstelle, die nicht übersetzt werden sollte, und Änderungslisten für ältere Versionen — diese sollten auch irgendwann übersetzt werden.
And we proudly present: The Deregifier! · 2006-08-22 22:26 by Wladimir Palant
After years of regexp mania we now have to go back to simple filters — starting with Adblock Plus 0.7 those are more efficient than regular expressions. This doesn’t mean that regular expressions got any slower, it’s that simple filters got very fast. There are also other advantages a dozen simple filters have over one long regexp. They are simply easier to read, “effective filter” in the blockable items tooltips presents more relevant information (one rule instead of the whole regexp), we get hit counts for every filter that is also more relevant, and we can deativate every simple filter separately if it causes problems.