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Posts by Joy Ohare:

SPAM is NOT on my Diet or How to Block Comment Spam

03.09.2008 by joyntheir Category antispam, spam 1 Comment →

While the exact definition of SPAM (not the canned meat) differs from person to person, the general feeling of SPAM is the same – an irritating nuisance. Online entrepreneurs are usually the ones accused of spamming. Until lately I did not realize that the online entrepreneur’s blogs are subject to being spammed by comments. In fact, while browsing through the web, I found one fellow actually advertising a free tool to spam blog comments. 

After reading the do’s and don’ts in that article, I went back through the comments I had received.  I found quite a few that were easy to spot.  They are normally short and vague.  Sometimes the spam comment will pick up the post title or the blog title, even if the comment does not make sense. I felt betrayed – fellow bloggers were spamming me.

One day last week I checked the comments on my wordpress blog (not this one, but another one I have).  I had 117 comments caught by askimet.  Akismet has been very good at recognizing spam comments.  The only problem with akismet is you have to read through the comments to ensure a valid comment did not get caught before you delete them.  I went searching for a plugin to fix my spam problem. I actually found several different plugins in several different types.

One works by making the author preview the comment before submitting.  I did not choose this one since if you hit the submit button instead of the preview button, you received a note to use the back button to preview first.  When I hit the back button, the comment was gone.  As a commenter, I would throw up my hands and move on.  A similar one claimed to fix the back-button problem. I could not get that one to work. The comments on that plugin were very favorable; I just couldn’t get it to work.

Another type uses a capcha.  We all run into those all over the place.  Some of them I cannot read which causes me frustration.  If it causes me frustration to go throught 3 or 4 before I get the capcha correct, it will frustrate some of my commenters.  Again, I moved on. 

A third type uses a simple math.  I found two of these.  I have used them on other’s blogs when commenting.  They seemed a simple solution that did not bother me. Some people are not very good at math.  So why take the chance of frustrating a good follower just because they might not add quickly? 

I found and installed WP-spamfree.  This handy plugin is ‘plug and play’ with a few options available if you want.  I copied the code for the ‘badge’ which shows how many comments were caught.  I simply opened the footer.php and place the code at the very top (before the footer theme code).  You can see mine at Be the Weight You Want.  In less than 24 hours it has caught 12 spam comments.  I put the badge on the page so my readers would know it was to catch spam.  Now my akismet can be my safety net incase wp-spamfree misses something.

In my testing of this plugin, it has been virtually invisible to the commenter.  I hope if my readers comments do not get through they will let me know. I will have to put a contact link in my sidebar so they (you) can let me know if my new tool blocks them.

Do you have this problem?  What is your answer?

How often should I write a post on my blog?

13.08.2008 by joyntheir Category blogging, publish interval 2 Comments →

I have read many opinions by many professional bloggers on this subject. One point that remains consistent is to publish at least 3 posts a week. The reason for this is to keep your readers interested. The other point consistent between all the opinions is to keep your posts at a regular interval – such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way your readers know when to expect a new post.

I have heard many opinions that say to post at least once a day. This sounds difficult, but really isn’t. You can write several posts on one day and schedule them to be published in most blogging platforms. I would caution you that if you are going to write once a day (or more) that you ensure you have a topic to write on that will be beneficial to your readers. The very longest time interval even mentioned was once a week.

I find it helpful to have a calendar to schedule my post publications on. I now have 5 blogs (including this one) to keep up. I try to schedule them two on one day, two on the next, and the fifth my plan is to do one post a day (the blog reviews) as I have blogs to spotlight. I also use Google documents (spreadsheet) to list all the topics I can write on for each blog.

Recently I wrote a series on one blog. Since it was a series, I scheduled the posts to published every 2nd-3rd day. I didn’t want too much time to pass between so my readers wouldn’t lose interest. It was a really great idea, I thought. My traffic slowed tremendously – so maybe my readers didn’t think my idea was so hot. The month was July, and right around the 4th of July, so perhaps my readers were on vacation. Or maybe it is just that summer is not the time people focus on diets. What I learned from this was to not write a long series. In this case, I was stuck finishing the series even though it seemed to bomb.

As a final note – keep your blog focused. If your topics cover too wide an area, start a second blog that can contain some of the topics. For example: If your blog about food goes into decorating a kitchen, you might start another blog about kitchen designs. If your blog about dogs goes into cats, birds, and monkeys, you might want to split it into one for each type, or one for domestic pets, one for birds, and one for exotic pets. Your readers come because the are interested in the subject. They can loss interest if you stray too far.

How often do you post to your blog?

Happy Blogging!





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