We know that Textpattern relies heavily on sections. Traditionally, if you want to setup one section of your site as the blog, the RSS functionality for Textpattern will only add articles for that particular section. So what happens when you want to combine two or more sections into one RSS feed? Previously, you were out of luck…that is, until the aks_header plugin came along.

With this plugin, you can group sections into one feed. Exactly what I needed to do with the A Pretty Rock website, to allow feeding one RSS feed to NetworkedBlogs for its Facebook Fan page. It works great!

Want to learn how to do this yourself? Read this excellent article: Create and customize your own RSS feeds. It explains a method using the plugin aks_header to group and manage RSS feeds like ordinary Textpattern articles. Note that the Textpattern tag, “txp_article_custom”, permits the use of comma separated list of sections, which is how you get your feed to pull from more than one section.

Problem solved!

reCAPTCHA is a free service that takes CAPTCHA one step further. If you’re not familiar with a CAPTCHA, it’s a program that helps control the amount of spam received through web forms by generating tests that humans, but not computers, can pass. For example, when you visit a blog to comment and you are asked to type out a set of words, numbers, or phrase in order to submit your comment, that is a CAPTCHA.

What makes reCAPTCHA different is that they are using these web forms to help digitize material like books, newspapers and radio shows. By having humans process words that current computers find difficult reading, they are processing internet archives and old editions of the New York Times, for starters. I think this is one of the neatest ideas I’ve heard all week.

Check out this ScienCentral video explaining reCAPTCHA:

They have application plugins for WordPress, Movable Type, and Joomla among several others. Go check them out!

Have any other spam control plug-ins or addons I should consider? Let me know below!