The Prolific Blogger Award

English Wilderness was recently awarded the Prolific Blogger Award by Sandra at My Mother Thinks I'm a Good Writer. Thanks Sandra, it's great to hear I'm doing something right :-)

The award was orginally created by Hazra of Advance Bookings. The award is to recognise those prolific bloggers who blog tirelessly and have made the blogging community such a vibrant place.

Here are the rules:

1. Every winner of the Prolific Blogger Award has to pass on this award to at least seven other deserving prolific bloggers. Spread some love!
2. Each Prolific Blogger must link to the blog from which he/she has received the award.
3. Every Prolific Blogger must link back to This Post, which explains the origins and motivation for the award.
4. Every Prolific Blogger must visit this post and add his/her name in the Mr. Linky, so that we all can get to know the other winners.

Finally, here are my nominations:

• North-Country Ramblings - Peter spends his time hiking and camping some of the U.K.'s most beautiful wild places. Amazing photos.
• Little Sealed Packages - a photo blog I discovered recently, a fascinating blend of Derbyshire life, history and curiosities.
• A Postcard a Day - Sheila takes us on a journey through some of the world's most interesting history and places with her postcard collection.
• The Everyday Adventurer - Ratty explores his local reserves and nature trails, capturing some amazing photos of the wildlife he discovers.
• Mostly Maths - I found Ruben's blog a few months ago and have been a regular ever since. An enticing mix of programming, gardening and book reviews.
• Redcode: Random - An entertaining mix of algorithms, math and recreational programming are covered by Roy's blog.
• The Reinvigorated Programmer - Mike started 3 months ago and has attracted 570,000 visitors! Covers programming and Doctor Who, intermingled with pictures of sushi!

Fixing Comments on Blogger

A few people mentioned Blogger's embedded comment form is awkward to use on certain browsers. Here's a template tweak that makes it possible to offer the old pop-up comments as an alternative.

Here's the tweak:

Please try the <a
expr:href='&quot;https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?&quot; +
&quot;blogID=BLOG ID&amp;postID=&quot; +
data:post.id + &quot;&amp;isPopup=false&quot;'>alternative
comment form</a> if you&#39;re having trouble commenting.

The tweak can be installed as follows:

1. go to Layout then Edit HTML,
2. expand Widget Templates,
3. make a backup of your template just in case,
4. search for <data:blogCommentMessage/>,
5. paste the code for the tweak after <data:blogCommentMessage/>,
6. replace BLOG ID with the number at the end of the URL,
7. Finally save the template and double check it works as expected.

If you'd like to see the tweak in action, please take a look at my daily photo gallery. :-)

New WordPress Virus: Has Your Site Been Hacked?

Several WordPress blogs I visited this morning tried to redirect me to either gescansecurity or a Bing search for freevirusscan.

Affected blogs load a script just before the </body> tag and can be identified by searching the source for kdjkfjskdfjlskdjf. After being redirected to Bing a cookie is set to prevent the user from being redirected for 20 days.

Please take a moment to check whether your blog has been compromised.