Working at Home on the Internet

Here We Go Again, Akismet Is Eating My Comments

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 Way back in November of 2006, Akismet started eating my comments. I have no idea why except somewhere, somehow, I got stuck in someone’s Moderation or Spam cue and ended up being reported as Spam to Akismet.

At the time, I wrote a post about My Comments being Eaten. I got some good advice from my friends, but it just took a lot of perseverance and de-spamming to get the problem solved.

I do moderate my comments and try to de-spam everyone who makes legitimate comments, but it is starting to get a little overwhelming with well over 500 spams caught a day. It is getting to be very time consuming and takes away from other business responsibilities.

I know exactly When it started, but not Why. I was participating in Open Comment Night over as Successful Blog and had No Problems. But after I left and answered a comment on my own blog, My comment didn’t show. I immediately went into Akismet (after my last experience) to see if it was there. Shore enough, I was caught, right there in my own Akismet cue.

The last time, it went on for over a full week which led me to write a rant called Akismet Sucks. I was so fed up with not being able to comment anywhere I almost stopped using Akismet. However, not too long after that post, things started showing in my comments that I had written, then they started showing in other peoples comments on their blogs.

The problem went away all by itself, really with a lot of perseverance and monitoring of comments, and I got happy again and stayed with Akismet.

So, help me out here, if I comment on your Blog and it ends up in your spam cue, Please release me, let me go.

Hopefully, it wont take as long as the last episode. I don’t need the aggravation.

May 23rd, 2007 at 10:35am | Posted by Joe | Akismet, Commenting, Rants | 4 reader remarks | Print This Post

I Was Forced To Write a Comment Policy

 Did you notice the little icon in the sidebar?

It’s been there for about 2 weeks. I thought I would quietly reward all of the people who contribute to the Blog by Commenting. And I intend to keep it there for as long as I own this site.

I never really got the reason behind “no follow” other than as a tool for the SE’s in the Fight Against Spam. Since I have Akismet, that is not really a problem any longer for me, so allowing links to get credit as a link back to the commenter is not a problem either.

However, there are always Some who try to take advantage of the kind-hearted nature of Bloggers and people that have a community built up over time by trying to get link backs for things that are Totally Unrelated to the Content of Posts or the Intent of the Blog Itself by posting Totally Irrelevant Comments just for the Sake of a Link. (sorry for the run-on sentence).

Therefore, I Have Been Forced to Write a Comment Policy. I never wanted nor did I find the need for one before, but I feel it has become a necessity. So, I will have a link to the page in the sidebar for those who have questions if I Deleted Their Comment(s).

Sorry for the inconvenience to any and all of the regulars who visit. Please don’t be discouraged from commenting. We are still a strong community and the “Do Follow” will Stay as Long as I Own This Blog.

Technorati Tags: do-follow, comments, spam, splogs, Comment Policy

May 5th, 2007 at 09:56am | Posted by Joe | Akismet, Blogging, Commenting, Community, Linking | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

WordPress Plug-ins I Use

I know there are zillions of Plug-ins out there for WordPress Blogs. My problem has always been finding the useful ones to do tasks I feel I need to accomplish, in the easiest manner, and save some time. To that end, I thought I would share the Plug-ins I use to help save you having to look all over for some of the more useful Plug-ins.

These are not in any particular order of importance because each one does something unique.

Akismet… They check your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service (it’s free). The only real problem I ever had with Akismet is when it ATE MY COMMENTS and it considered ME SPAM (they did fix it after some prodding). Other than that, it has saved me from almost 13,000 Spam Comments so far. What’s a little aggrevation for such a great service.

bdp-comments… It lists recent comments and posts for display in the sidebar. I am only using it for recent reader remarks at this point. With this, readers can see what conversation is going on, who’s there and what post the comments are on so they can join right in.

FD Feedburner Plugin… This is suposed to convert all RSS feeds into FeedBurner feeds for easy tracking of subscribers. I installed this last week and haven’t seen any real changes in stats. Maybe it only changes New Feeds? The jury is still out on this one.

Filosofo Uncheck Default Category… I am really glad that I found this one. It takes one of the most annoying aspects of using categories in WordPress, having to uncheck the default of Uncategorized, and Unchecks it automatically when you click a different category. Only saves 2 seconds per post, but it’s well worth installing.

In Series… Provides navigation controls for next/previous within a connected series of posts. It’s fairly easy to install and use if you do any ongoing series of posts. I never got the next/previous within the series right, but I didn’t go through all the steps of installing all of the code. It’s on the to-do list to finish, although it works fine the way I have it.

SimpleTags… This allows for the insertion of Technorati Tags within posts. Very easy install, just a little code in the post to make it work. I don’t know why it took so long to find, but you can take it with you if you want to use tags for T-rati.

Subscribe To Comments… This makes it easy to allow readers to follow conversations in comments on your blog. All they have to do is check the little box, and they will be notified of any new comments by email.

WordPress Database Backup… I don’t have to tell you how important backing up your information is. This makes backing up your WP database easy.

WP-ContactForm… When I was having tons of spam coming in through the Blog, I went on a quest to find something to alleviate the problem. This is easy to install and easy to use for your readers. And it does help keep the spam down a bit from blog email.

wp-notable… If you want to include some of the more notable Social Bookmarks like Digg, deli-o-cious, etc to your posts, this will give you choices of which ones you want to include and even show the icon for each site.

There you have it, the Plug-ins I have and use to make my day a little easier. Whether you Work at Home or just Blog for Fun, you may want to try a couple of these out for yourself.

Have you found any WP Plug-ins that make your day a little easier? Want to share?

Related Posts:

Save 10 Seconds per Post

Fighting Spam: One Step at a Time

Installing the In-Series Plug-in

Basic Tools I Use

Technorati Tags: WordPress, Plugins, Filosofo, In Series, Akismet, Simple Tags, bdp comments, WP ContactForm, wp-notable, Subscribe to Comments, FD Feedburner Plugin

January 16th, 2007 at 06:03am | Posted by Joe | Akismet, Plug-ins, Resources, Tools, WordPress | 3 reader remarks | Print This Post