WordPress and Course Registration Upgrade

Posted on December 18, 2011 by chltx

I recently upgraded my WordPress to 3.3, and also applied the latest version of the course registration plugin.

…And I have had some subtle problems with both of them. I’m not going to have time to work on either problem until later this week. I’ve managed to schedule my December so solidly that I occasionally have to duck to avoid running into myself on the way back.

The problem I’m having with WP 3.3 is that the search widget no longer works properly. I have temporarily removed it, and I’m looking for a better way to implement search. I’ve heard there may be a Google search plugin that can be tailored to do what I want, so I will be evaluating plugins for that later this week.

I’m seeing at least two problems with the course registration plugin. The database appears to have some funky characters in it, which should be easy enough to fix when I get some time. It also looks like I’m going to have to go in and set up my notifications again. The prior version didn’t have the right behavior either, so I did some modifications to the source code to get it to do what I wanted. The upgrade wiped my changes out, and since the upgrade was a fairly major re-write, the code for that isn’t where it was before. Again, as soon as I have the time, I will be looking through the code to see where I have to modify things.

Since I’m studying the innards of WordPress, and slowly becoming proficient at programming in PHP, I will probably be doing some experimentation over the holidays. I’ve already discovered that there are some ways to implement changes to the theme that won’t get wiped out by updates, and I think there might be some way to do the same for plugins.

As it turns out, I have a couple of days of vacation that I wasn’t planning to take, but I belatedly discovered that at my new job, there is no vacation carry-over. It’s “use it or lose it.” I’m glad to say that my supervisor is on top of things there, and notified me of the problem when he reviewed my Christmas break schedule. Unfortunately, that discovery came too late to schedule any more CHL classes, so the regular schedule will resume in January, with CHL on the 2nd Saturday of each month, and NRA classes on the 1st Sunday of alternate months. I already know of one conflict (in May) that may preclude a CHL class that month, but otherwise, that’s the plan.

If there are any WP-savvy readers out there, I would definitely appreciate any suggestions you might have. Either leave a comment, use the comment form, or send me an email. Even if you aren’t WP-savvy, if you see something that doesn’t work quite right, let me know. Thanks in advance!

Update, December 18th, 2011: I re-installed the search widget, and added a plugin that does look-ahead. Not sure what actually fixed the search problem, but search does appear to be working correctly now, and the look-ahead drop-down box is kinda neat. I had a little bit of unexpected free time drop in my lap, so the next item up is to look in the class registration code to change the way it handles notifications. Oh, and fix that bad database entry.

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Current Handgun Course Enrolment Trends

Posted on November 17, 2011 by chltx

I’ve noticed a definite drop-off in the number of students in the last few months. Other instructors have noticed similar trends, although I had one tell me that business picked up a little starting last month. All in all, it seems that there are fewer people getting a CHL these days, and the CHL business is generally off substantially from the levels of a year ago.

There is a lot of speculation about why. I think that the changes that allow people to keep handguns in their motor vehicles is a big factor. Before that change, I had some students who were applying for a CHL just to get around the hassle-factor involved in keeping a gun in the car. Now, I suspect that current CHL holders are not renewing because they no longer think they need the license.

Another factor — with Arizona going to “constitutional carry,” I think some folks in Texas are expecting (hoping?) that something like that will happen here. Some states allow open carry without a license, and there has been some push for that in Texas.

I don’t have any philosophical objection to constitutional carry, but even if you aren’t required to get a license, you should know the laws pertaining to the use of deadly force if you are going to carry a gun. Ignorance of when you are permitted to use deadly force can land you in serious trouble. Even get you killed.

And, while I don’t have a philosophical objection to open carry, I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea. I believe that concealed carry is a better deterrent to crime. Personally, I don’t expect either constitutional carry or open carry to come to Texas in the next few years.

Anyone who chooses to carry a gun needs to learn how to shoot well. Don’t make the mistake of thinking a handgun is something will protect you if you don’t get proper training and practice with it. That’s one of the reasons that I have started teaching the NRA Basic Pistol Course.

The NRA BP course covers the fundamentals of how guns work, how to properly maintain a gun, and marksmanship. Students in my class get to shoot a variety of different handguns, which gives them more insight into what to look for when they go shopping for a handgun. My students gain confidence in their ability to safely handle a gun and shoot well. Even students with significant shooting experience have told me that they got a lot out of the class.

In the long term, I do expect that the role of the CHL instructor will be diminished, or may go away entirely. That trend has already started. A lot of the paperwork for the CHL is already done online. It would not surprize me much if the DPS went entirely to online CHL classes, and the instructors only administered the range test. In that case, I will switch over to mainly providing Basic Pistol classes.

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Over the weekend I attended a WordPress class at which I learned several interesting tips and tricks. Turns out it is fairly simple to just block a website (any website, not just a WordPress site) from visitors based on IP address. So, I found a site that publishes various IP address lists, and picked out one that had the known US-based IP addresses, and I set this site to deny any not on that list. For this site, that is a reasonable thing to do, since my target demographic is residents of north central Texas.

I did that a couple of days ago. As a result, I saw my traffic drop by about 40%, which is not a bad thing since it means that the traffic I am now getting is much more highly focused on what I have to offer. Plus, the traffic is building up again.

The spambot comment traffic has slowed to an easily managed trickle.

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Posted on November 2, 2011 by chltx | 1 Comment

About a month ago, I noticed a bogus registration from a somebody who never paid, and did not show up. A week after the class, I saw an identical registration , so I tried calling the phone number. It was not a working number, so I just deleted the sign-up.

About two weeks ago, I started getting several obviously bogus registrations with gibberish names, and 800 numbers (or incomplete phone numbers). At that point, I started checking, and discovered that the signups were coming from a Chinese IP address. Yesterday, I got about 5 of those bogus registrations. It was now well past the nuisance stage, so I started looking for a way to block these bogus registrations.

After a bit of searching for things like the 800 numbers that were being used, I ran across some very interesting information: These spambots are trying to register as users for the purpose of making spam comments on blogs. They were apparently keying off of the word “register” in either the page title or the main menu. Since the registration menu item on my site comes before the blog menu item, that’s what they were hitting.

I have changed “registration” to “sign-up,” which I hope will at least move the problem to the comments section, where I can use one of the readily available plug-ins to block them (like the one that can just block Chinese IP addresses). I’m hoping that this reduces the problem to a manageable level, and that future potential students will not be prevented from registering for a class because some low-life spammer has filled the registration list with bogus entries.

Edit 10/12/2011: Haven’t seen any ‘registrations’ from spambots in a couple of days, although a large number of the ‘hits’ on the site are from a known spambot IP. I would like to think I’ve defeated them permanently, although the chances of that are pretty slim.

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Posted on October 11, 2011 by chltx | 1 Comment

Commuting as a Competitive Sport

Posted on September 12, 2011 by chltx

One of the things that I usually bring up in the non-violent conflict resolution section of my CHL course is that there are a lot of people who consider commuting to be some sort of competitive sport. They just have to go a little faster and “get there” before anyone else.

I prefer a different variation of that game. To me, winning means getting where I’m going without breaking any glass or rearranging any sheet metal. As usual, I won this morning. I got to work without breaking any glass or rearranging any sheet metal. One of the nice things about that particular game is that nobody else has to lose in order for me to win. And as Scott Degraffenreid (This is not a paid referral link, and I don’t get a commission if you click on it, or even if you buy one of his books.) would put it, “Everybody deserves a winnable game worth playing.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out quite that way this morning, even though I personally won, by my criteria. I left the house a few minutes early so that I would have time to get gasoline. After I filled up, I got back on the road just to see that there had been a major traffic collision on the route to work several blocks down the road. If I had not stopped for gas, I might have been in that collision. The police were letting just one lane through — up until about the time I got up there, when they closed down that lane, and I was trapped there for about 25 minutes.

The figure loaded onto the ambulance was completely covered. When the ambulance left, it was not running the flashing lights, nor the siren.

This morning, somebody lost the game.

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Posted in Course Material | 1 Comment