power_search.php floods

For some reason I (and other users) have found a bunch of losers still attempting to exploit a flaw in IndexU that hasn’t existed in at least two years.

You will notice users trying to exploit this flaw by visiting the power_search.php URL as follows

/power_search.php?pflag=search&title=VGOFmPcTvgSzKlBHGU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The URL is extremely long, and for users of 5.4x and Deluxe nothing happens. But I noticed recently something IS happening.

What’s happening is that IndexU is throwing back a 404 not found page. This is all fine and good, but on one site I have hundreds of these submissions daily which sucks up bandwidth like crazy.

Disabling power_search.php doesn’t help, because IndexU still returns the 404 error. You need to do the following

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Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Unknown modifier ‘/’

A user recently experienced the following issue with v5.41 where he would get the error Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Unknown modifier ‘/’ any time a new link is submitted.

The solution was simple.

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Wordpress integration

As noted on the Nicecoder forum and found elsewhere, the wordpress integration for IndexU is an excellent addition for any IndexU site.

Some users have asked me recently about the WordPress integration and WordPress 2.5x, so here are the results of my testing.

Recently WordPress was upgraded to a new version with a large number of changes. The good news is that after testing, IndexU users can upgrade to the 2.5x versions of WordPress without worry, using the old instructions.

Can’t find variable: onchangeCategories

A few users lately have had issues with add.php giving out errors like the one below

Can’t find variable: onchangeCategories
http://www.yoururl.com/add.php (line 102)

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IndexU Deluxe v1.x Edit Guide

I have created a small guide of the most commonly edited areas and where you can edit those areas. It’s a visual guide so it should appeal to most users.

It deals with the most commonly asked question of “where do change x?” Well now you know!

IndexU Deluxe Edit Guide (requires login to blog to function)

Server test script

Ever wanted to know if your host can handle IndexU before installing it? Well with the use of this little script you can find out.

You could even ask your host to run it for you before you sign up to see if they meet your requirements and send you a screenshot or URL to see the results.

Download it, it’s free!

Search the web error

A user came up with the following error when using the “search the web” feature of IndexU Deluxe

failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request in /home/progambl/public_html/links/search.php on line 367

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/progambl/public_html/links/search.php on line 371

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session_start error

Lately a number of users have been seeing this error

Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by

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Gettext error

A user recently found an issue with IndexU Deluxe that resulted in the following error

Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_detect_encoding() in /home/seccinc/public_html/new/lib/gettext/gettext.inc on line 101

The solution is to add this to gettext.inc

// PATCH

if (!function_exists(’mb_detect_encoding’)) {

// We’re on an aged PHP version

function mb_detect_encoding($text) {

return ‘UTF-8′;

}

function mb_convert_encoding($text,$target_encoding,$source _encoding) {

return $text;

}

}

// EINDE PATCH

Issue and solution found by secero

Note - This issue is actually caused by mbstring not being compiled into PHP. This would typically be the fault of the host or provider as mbstring is commonly compiled into PHP by default.

More on spam filters

Heres a huge list of words you can add to your spam filters

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For more info on how to use the filters in IndexU please see this post