We were tired of seeing “what’s my ip?” websites which were slow and messy to use so we launched our own service! All you really need is your IP address, so that’s exactly what we’re going to provide you. Nothing else. The page is just under a kilobyte and will load as fast as it possibly could. Skatter Tech IP will provide two pieces of data at this time: your ip address and your domain host. At this point this is all we plan to offer, but we plan to expand our tools in the future. And just like the rest of Skatter Tech, any tracked data is completely kept completely private. We will ONLY use it for statistical purposes. Any specific user information will be not be available for ANYONE to view. Anyways, to find out what your IP address is, just visit http://ip.skattertech.com. Even hit CTRL+D add it to your bookmarks!

If you have any suggestions or ideas to implement into onto this site, just leave us a comment!

Link: ip.skattertech.com

Since we switched over to the WordPress platform about a year and half ago, we’ve have continuously been hit by large numbers of spammers. Luckily with some tweaks, pieces of code, a few services, and some manual labor we’ve been able to catch 100% spam comments on our site. If you were wondering what was our number one tool, one word, Akismet. This innovative spam catching tool, alone, has caught over 100,000 spam comments for Skatter Tech this year. Akismet works by checking checking the data that is posted onto our server with a huge database of items known to be spam. Since the spam database learns by users moderating their own comments, it automatically adapts to new types of spam. According to their website, Akismet has been able to catch 93% of all the spam that would hit a website.

Although this only caught about 60% of the total amount of spam, it took another 3-4 tools, including Bad Behavior, to block another 30%. We still end up having to manually catch and throw out about 10% of what gets onto our sites. We could always implement a captcha system or require registration, however that would only be annoying and would deter everyone from participating in discussions. This tool has been primarily created for WordPress, however it is also compatible with plenty of other systems including Movable Type, Drupal, phpBB, Expression Engine, Joomla and more! We highly recommend giving Akismet a shot if you already haven’t heard about it and are having problems fighting spam.

P.S. We’ll be posting a WordPress tutorial on combating spam very soon!

Links: Akismet.com

Since the digg started, they have had a large issue combating spammers. This eventually lead to an amazing large list of banned sites. About six months ago this site, Skatter Tech, was for some reason added to that list. We had sent digg a few emails requesting the reason it had been blocked, but we received no response. We expected the ban to be lifted, but it never was until now! Digg has apparently lifted the blacklist on thousands of domains and has implemented a new algorithm for submissions to prevent spam from entering the main page. Hopefully the new code will do the trick and lifting the banned sites will not cause an inflation in spam.

Anyways, for our readers, this means the “digg” link found besides the del.icio.us on our permalink pages will now function properly. (No more submission error messages) Finally, if you find any of our articles “digg worthy” you are welcome to submit them.

(P.S. The digg logo in the image atop can be downloaded from DevianArt.)

Links: digg.com | digg blog
Related: Digg Search Widget

We recently launched Skatter Tech Boards a few weeks ago, but soon ran into quite a few issues. We were using phpBB and had quite a difficult time managing content due to large spam surges. We didn’t like the fact that we had to spend more time cleaning out spam than responding to questions. As a result we took it down and decided to try Lussumo Vanilla instead. So far we have been pleased as the forum software looks much cleaner and organized than phpBB was. You may now access Skatter Tech Forums at forums.skattertech.com or through the link at the top.

Also note that registeration is now easier than ever. Just enter an email address and pick a username/password and you are done. Sorry for any inconvience switching over may have caused. We’ll stay put for now.

Link: forums.skattertech.com

Only about two weeks after the launch of WordPress 2.0.6 and 2.0.7, the WordPress crew finally pushed v2.1 (aka “Ella”) out of beta. WP2.1, rather than a patch, is a major upgrade from the 2.x series. The blogging engine, which Skatter Tech is currently running, now has a more powerful back-end for administrators to manage content. Although many plugins no longer work for 2.1, we recommend updating since it also includes over 550 bug fixes. The following is some of the major changes implemented.

WordPress v2.1 Features:

• Ajax AutoSave Posts – prevents loosing posts
• Tabbed Editor – WYSIWYG and Raw Code
• Ajax-based Spell Checker for composer
• XML Import/Export – transfer data between blogs
• Search Engine – custom indexing privacy settings
• Front Page – set any page as the main page
• Blogroll – many improvements and changes
• Login – redesigned screen from Shuttle
• Ajax Admin Panel – helps speed up tasks
• Comment Feeds – includes all rather than last 10
• Uploads – management for uploaded data
• Other: Cron support, new APIs, and more

We are pleased with the overall improvments the update brings. Managment and content seems to be flowing much faster than ever before. As we mentioned we are having diffucluties with some plugins, but most of the major ones either already have been updated or work.

Links: WordPress 2.1 ‘Ella’ | Download
Related: Instructions For 2.0.x to 2.1

Over the past few days Skatter Tech has been working on a mobile version of our site and it is finally up and running. To access our site from a mobile phone simply enter skattertech.com into the address as you would on any computer (no special URLs required). The portable web pages are XHTML complaint and should work on most WAP 2.0 phones, PDAs, Pocket PCs, and similar devices. From our testing, we found it to work on Verizon WAP 2.0 supported phones, Windows-based Pocket PCs, and on the Blackberry. (also works on the PSP!) If you’ve got a mobile device with a browser, let us know what you are using and whether our site works.

Links: skattertech.com
Related: Skatter Tech Forums

After two years running and thousands of requests, Skatter Tech has finally created some message boards. All our readers are more than welcome to participate. Consider this new feature “beta” as there are still a ton of changes that will need to be made. Anyways for now the forum has got a few categories and sections. Feel free to post any questions you have and help others out by answering theirs. If you have any suggestions please let us know.

Also note from this point on, please avoid posting supported-related questions on the comment feature on this portion of the site and direct them to the message boards. We feel that by doing this it will be easier for everyone to communicate with each other using a forum system. The phpBB-based forum unfortunately requires registration unlike the comments on this part of the site. Please take a minute to register and get it over with, you’ll never have to deal with it again, I promise.

Links: Skatter Tech Boards (boards.skattertech.com)

Update: (02/14/07) The NEW NEW Skatter Tech Forums are now up and running! Just visit http://forums.skattertech.com or press “Forums” link.

We recently had some requests to offer a wider version of our theme. Our server statistics showed that over 80% of our readers had screen resolutions greater than 1000 pixels wide. Therefore we decided to integrate a second CSS to our site’s theme and a bit of java to allow switching back and forth instantly. With a click of the “Toggle CSS” button, Skatter Tech’s theme should instantly expand from its original 800 pixel wide format into one 1000 pixels wide. We will also leave a tiny cookie in your browser which will save your preference for future visits.

P.S. We have tested this in MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 1.5+, let us know if you were able to get this to work in your browser or if you experienced any problems. Please reply in the comments.

Links: Skatter Tech | Related: We’re Back!

Skatter Tech recently run into problems with our hosting provider 1and1, who decided it, would cost them too much to host us. The had pulled the site from their hosting server and decided to hold it until we upgraded our hosting plan. Anyways we decided to leave and after going through another hosting provide Yahoo, where we once again ran into some technical issues, we wound up with Media Temple. Media Temple seems to be working out for the time being. With this being said, Skatter Tech has been restored and we’ll be getting back on track right away. Definitely expect more posts, new authors, and better content soon!

Links: Skatter Tech | SahasKatta.com

Skatter Tech has just created a “Widget” for all our readers. To use this widget you must have Konfabulator installed. Konfabulator is a free tool that allows placing widgets on your desktop on either a Windows or a Mac machine. These widgets can display any type of information such as news, weather, time, stock quotes, and much more. This specific widget will show the latest five stories posted on this site. As soon as a new story is posted the widget will automatically update itself with the newest items. Clicking on the title of any item will directly open the story in your default browser. The arrow mark will take you to our homepage www.skattertech.com. This widget works on both operating systems, but is currently still in BETA. Please install and tryout our widget, it is available in Konfabulator’s Widget Gallery. Note: Konfabulator was recently purchased by Yahoo and their product is now called Yahoo Widgets. The service still offers the exact same features and has not been compromised with ads or anything else.

Link: Get The Skatter Tech Widget | Get Konfabulator
Related: Yahoo Widgets | Widget Gallery
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