CommentLuv = SpammerLuv?

One drawback to a WordPress plugin.

Back in November, I wrote a post about a new plugin I’d installed on my two main blog-based sites: Maria’s Guides and An Eclectic Mind. The plugin is called CommentLuv and it automatically retrieves and displays a link for the last post a commenter added to his or her blog.

Here are some examples from the post I wrote about CommentLuv, where I invited people to try it out.

The idea behind CommentLuv is to encourage people to comment by automatically linking back to their blog. I think it’s a great idea — when used by people who have real content to contribute in comments.

On the surface, CommentLuv is extremely attractive to spammers who keep blogs. Not only can they include a relatively normal looking comment with a link to their blog when they enter it in the Web site field of the comment form, but they also have an automatic link to their most recent work. Two links for the time it takes to post one, right? And that second link can give readers an idea of what their blog is all about by including the title of the most recent post.

What these people don’t seem to realize is that the CommentLuv link is created with a “nofollow” attribute. So if they think they can improve search engine optimization (SEO) by adding links to their sites on the sites they comment on, they’re wasting their time. The links are not recognized by Google or any other search engine or automated tool.

But what I’ve seen lately is a number of the same people coming back, again and again, to post comments like “Great post! I’ll keep checking in.” These comments usually appear on recent posts and, with some commenters, they appear several times a week. This gets past my spam prevention software and ends up on my blog.

While most people wouldn’t mind the added comments with their apparently complementary content, this isn’t content. It’s spam. There’s nothing being contributed to the site other than two free links for the commenter. So I delete these comments regularly.

Now I’m not suggesting that you avoid CommentLuv. I still think it’s a great plugin. But I do want users to be aware of its attraction for spammers. On a popular blog, installing CommentLuv could add about 10 minutes a week to your spam maintenance routine — after all, you have to manually decide whether a comment is legitimate or posted solely to attract hits for the commenter’s blog. Adding a regular abuser to your blacklist might be a good course of action.

RSSImport

A WordPress plugin to add links to RSS feeds.

On pages 165-166 of WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide, Miraz and I discuss CG-Feedread, a plugin that enables you to list the titles (with links) of posts on another blog based on RSS feed content. We use the plugin on this site to list content from Miraz’s Mactips.info site and my An Eclectic Mind site.

I hate to admit it, but I never really liked that plugin. It came as part of a package and I was only interested in that one part. So today, while attempting to add the same feature to two of my WordPress-based sites, I looked for a different, simpler solution. And I found it: RSSImport by Frank Bueltge.

RSSImport is a one-trick pony. It enables you to add a list of posts from any RSS feed. There are four options: the number of posts to list, the URL of the feed, whether the list should include descriptions, and whether the post title should be truncated to 30 characters.

You install and activate the plugin like any other plugin. (You can refer to Chapter 7 of our book or consult the documentation that comes with the file if you need help.) Then place the following code in your template file — most likely sidebar.php — where you want the list to appear:

<?php RSSImport(10,
"http://feeds.feedburner.com/mariasguides"
,false,false); ?>

The options go between the parentheses. In this example, I’ll pull 10 posts from the Maria’s Guides feed, exclude the description, and disable the 30-character limit on posts. The result looks like this on An Eclectic Mind. As you can see, I included a heading before the code so the list would blend in with the rest of my sidebar content.

And if you look on the Maria’s Guides site, you’ll see a similar list for an Eclectic Mind. (The two sites used to be one and they’re still somewhat “joined at the hip.”)

I recommend the plugin if you’re looking for a simple solution to list another blog’s posts. But if you want to list multiple blogs’ posts in the same list, CG-Feedread is probably a better solution.

How to Create a Gravatar

A few easy steps can get your custom image on gravatar-enabled blogs.

If you read a lot of blogs, you’re probably already familiar with gravatars — custom images that represent certain commenters. These images are a kind of personal logo that identifies them and says something about their personality.

Here’s how gravatars work. A commenter creates an image suitable for a gravatar and uploads it to his account on gravatar.com. The gravatar is rated using pretty much the same ratings as the movie industry: G, PG, R, and X. These ratings are used by bloggers to set limits on the kinds of gravatars that appear on their sites — a gravatar with a G rating will appear everywhere while a gravatar with an X rating may not appear on many blogs at all.

Meanwhile, a blogger (like me) sets up her blog to enable it for gravatars. Then, when a commenter submits a comment, the blog’s gravatar plugin takes the commenter’s e-mail address (submitted in the comment form) and attempts to find a match at gravatar.com. If it finds a match, it displays the corresponding image. (The e-mail address is not used anywhere in the underlying page code.) If there’s no image on file, the plugin either displays nothing or displays a default image chosen by the blogger.

If you frequently participate in blogs by leaving comments for blog posts, you should consider creating a gravatar. Its easy and its free. Here’s how.

1. Go to gravatar.com’s Signup Page.
   
2. Enter your e-mail address in the box and click Signup. A message appears, telling you that an e-mail message has been sent to your account.
3. Check your e-mail. You should find a message from Gravatar with the subject “Welcome to Gravatar.”
4. Click the URL link in the e-mail message. Your browser opens and displays a message confirming that you have successfully activated your account.
   
5. Enter a password for your account in each of the boxes that appear and click Set Password.
6. If you want to receive a Gravatar newsletter, click the button in the next screen. Otherwise, click No Thanks.
7. Use your favorite graphics application to create an image suitable for use as a gravatar. For best results, it should be 80×80 pixels in size and not include a border. (Keep in mind that it might be displayed at smaller sizes.)
8. Save the image as a JPG, GIF, or PNG image with an Internet-friendly name (no spaces or weird characters).
9. Use your Web browser to open your My Gravatars page on gravatar.com. (You may need to log in to your account.)
   
10. Click the add a new one link.
11. In the next screen, click My computer’s hard drive.
12. In the next screen, click the Browse button. Then use the standard dialog that appears to locate, select and open the image file you created for your gravatar. The pathname appears in the File box.
    
13. Click the Next button. The file is uploaded and appears in the rating screen.
    
14. Click the appropriate button to apply a rating to the Gravatar. Don’t lie; this is important. And remember that for maximum exposure, it’s good to create a gravatar rated G or PG.
15. Your newly created Gravatar appears in the My Gravatars screen. Click it to select it for your e-mail address. When prompted, click the Confirm button. Here’s what it might look like when you’re finished:
    

You can repeat steps 10 through 14 to add additional images. You can then change your gravatar by simply selecting one of the new images. As you’ll see your gravatar changes globally wherever it’s used when you change it.

From that point on, your gravatar should appear whenever you post a comment to a gravatar-enabled blog.

ecto, Revisited

I’ve been using ecto by Adriaan Tijsseling for composing blog entries for my WordPress-based blogs and Web sites for well over a year now. It enables me to keep my blog up-to-date without using the Web-based Write Post form.

Although I’ve written about ecto here and here and I’ve also written about it in our WordPress 2 book, I thought I’d take a moment to bring readers up to date. ecto 3.0 is now pretty far along in the beta process — I just downloaded beta 12 — and it’s shaping up to be a much improved, intuitive blogging tool.

Compatibility

I do need to mention a few things about compatibility here. ecto 3 is a Mac OS X application. Although ecto 2.3 is available for Windows users (ported by Alex Hung), I have not tried it. I’m not sure if the plan is to create a Windows version of ecto 3.0 or not. So for now, its an application primarily geared toward Mac OS users. You can learn more about the evolution of ecto in the article, “Evolution of code.”

ecto also works with more than just WordPress. In fact, it works with all the blogging platforms I’ve heard of — and more. So although I use it with my WordPress blogs, it’s not just a WordPress tool.

What It Does

ecto offers a complete offline editing environment. You can choose from composing/editing with a Rich Text Editor that shows WYSIWYG formatting of your entries or an HTML editor, which lets you code to your heart’s content. SInce I never really trust a Rich Text Editor to get the code the way I want it, I use the HTML editor — although I’m thinking about giving the other editor a try. (Soon. Maybe.)

ecto’s Rich Text Editor

ecto’s HTML Editor, which is my currently preferred view

Either way, the editing window works like most other text editors. It has spell-check as you type, find and replace, and word count features. You can save posts as you work on them to prevent data loss or work on a post over a long period of time. (I sometimes start a post when I have an idea for one, then save it as a draft in ecto and come back to complete it days or weeks later.)

ecto also has tools for inserting and uploading images — with a wide range of options for setting a position and size. I didn’t have much luck with this feature in ecto 2 — although I admit I didn’t try very hard — but it works very well in ecto 3. You can also use a Media window to insert audio, photos, or video into a blog post. ecto inserts or embeds the media properly.

One of my favorite tools is the Amazon Helper. This feature makes it very easy to insert links to items on Amazon.com with links, images, or both. You have complete control over how the link appears. Best of all, your Amazon Associates ID is automatically inserted in each link.

ecto has many customization features that enable you to fine-tune its operations so it works the way you want it to. For example, you can created custom HTML tags and assign shortcut keys and toolbar buttons to them. This makes it very easy to insert any code you like. You can also specify CSS styles and template settings so the preview of your post — or the editing view, if you’re using Rich Text Editing — looks more like an entry in your blog.

But what I think I like most about ecto is its ability to store copies of all of my blog’s entries — and there are over 2,000 of them these days — on my computer’s hard disk. This makes it extremely easy to link to past posts as I compose new ones. It also makes it possible to pull up an old entry, update it, and republish. And offline editing is extremely useful when I travel, since I don’t always have an Internet connection. I can compose a blog entry on a plane or in my hotel room with my little PowerBook and upload it to my blog when a connection is available.

Give It a Try

If you’re not 100% happy with the Web-based post editor of your blogging tool, I encourage you to give ecto a try. There’s a free 21-day trial period that should give you enough time to put it through its paces. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

And I don’t think the $17.95 price tag will put you in the poorhouse, either.

Twitter and WordPress

After realising today that I sadly neglect my personal blog at Oddity59, but I use Twitter usually several times per day, I decided to add my tweets to that blog, at least as an experiment.

First I located Alex King’s WordPress Plugins, downloaded and installed :

Twitter Tools

This plugin creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

I set it up, but then received an error message and was unable to choose a category for the tweets. I headed off to the WordPress forums and found a very useful thread that linked to a copy of the plugin, as modified by thecuriousfrog:

I’ve posted an updated version of the Twitter Tools plugin on my blog http://tinyurl.com/27kyta which works with Wordpress 2.3 feel free to grab it. Incidently the TinyURL at the end of the tweet is automatic but you could stop it reasonable easy by editing the plugin.

Now that I’ve activated the plugin I’m not so sure it’s really the right thing to do: after all blogging and micro-blogging are different activities with different characteristics. Twitter now makes blogging seem fairly formal. While I try to be fairly grammatical in my blog posts, and to spell correctly, and to be at least a little coherent, those things all go out the window with Twitter.

As an experiment, it’s definitely worth a try though.

WordPress users: update Bad Behavior / Bad Behaviour immediately

Thanks to Maria for alerting me to this:

All users should update to Bad Behavior 2.0.11 immediately to prevent being blocked from your own site.

Within the past two days users have found themselves blocked from their own sites while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which Bad Behavior queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried, causing everyone using Bad Behavior to be blocked. This issue is fixed in Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

[Via : Bad Behavior / Bad Behaviour: Bad Behavior 2.0.11.]