Want to show your latest tweets in your blog sidebar? Thanks to a new simple widget we’ve installed, making it happen couldn’t be easier. (we’re using it on this blog to the right)
To add your tweets, just go to Appearance>>widgets>> add the Twitter for Wordpress widget and change the settings. Click the save button and tweet away!
-Eric Odom
Earlier this year we had two excellent anti-spam plugins running. Unfortunately, they both became unstable and began causing problems for the site.
But, I think we might have found another good combination. We’re going to try using a marriage of the two following plugins to cut back on comment spam.
1) Akismet
This is probably the most famous anti-spam plugin for Wordpress. To get it working on your site, you’ll need to go to Plugins>Installed> and activiate Akismet. Then, you’ll need to get an API key for Wordpress and enter it into the plugin configuration field.
2) Cookies for Comments
This plugin is automatically installed on your blog. It essentially identifies fake visitors and passes their data directly to the spam folder.
We’ll run these two plugins for a couple of weeks and see if they help. If not, we’ll try a different route.
Thanks for hanging in there!
-Eric Odom
Firestats was “so so,” but it didn’t quite do the trick and was a bit outdated. Because of this, we’ve gone ahead and installed Statpress on all Blogivists Blogs.
To view your statpress results and options, simply login to your blog’s dashboard and look at the lower left in the dashboard sidebar. Expand the Statpress window and choose overview for the stats, options for the options menu.
You can still use your own stat tracker, of course, but this one is readily available in the dashboard and easy to read.
Enjoy!
-Eric Odom
OK, I admit… I’m kind of excited about this poll. Not just because the poll is about the upgraded software we’re running, but also because I get to announce a new global plugin that will help you host polls on your blog as well.
That’s right… we now have the PollDaddy Plugin running on all Blogivists blogs. What this means is that once you set up a free Poll Daddy account, you’ll be able to easily post Poll Daddy polls in your blog posts.
Instructions:
Once you set up your free Poll Daddy account, find the button that allows you to create a new poll. Poll Daddy will walk you through the simple steps and options on setting up your poll. Once you save all of the settings for the poll, you’ll be taken to a page with some code for the poll.
Ignore the code that you’re presented with, and in the right sidebar you’ll see a box for “Wordpress Blogs”. Click on that box.
The next page presents you with three options. You want the option that says “I host my own WordPress blog (version 2.5 or higher)”. When you click that option, you’ll be given a short strip of code. Copy that and paste it into your blog post.
Save… publish… and vote!
With that said… please vote in this poll. 
[polldaddy poll="1343719"]
One of the major problems with the server switch is that we were using an old, outdated version of a couple spam preventing Wordpress plugins. While these plugins were doing their job of not sending us emails, a lot of spam comments still made it to moderation cue. (I know this because I had to clean out about 35 pages of spam on my own blog).
So, instead of trying to overwrite the plugins with a new version, I decided to overhaul the spam blocking system. I took out the old spam filters and implementing a new set of features. These are very aggressive spam blocking measures that I hope will cut back on the spam we say day in and day out.
The spam fighting hacks have three major components.
1) Captcha – Anyone not logged in is now required to fill in the Captcha word in order to even submit the comment. Now, I understand this can be annoying for people who are not registered members of our community, but it’s far more annoying weeding through 35 pages of comment spam, so I think the benefit outweighs the negatives.
2) Trackback Database – If the spammer does somehow get past the Captcha, or if they set up an account to spam us without us catching it, they’ll have to hope their URL’s have not been checked into the trackback database we use. This is not just a database we use; Rather, it’s a database that thousands of Wordpress users chack against and report to. So if a spammer’s URL has been flagged before, it’s going to get blocked out and the comment will be marked as spam.
3) Comment Links – It’s perfectly OK to have a link or two in a comment. Heck, I do it all the time. But it becomes questionable to have more than two links in a comment, and from now on we’re watching for this. Our system checks for comments that are heavy on the links as they come in, and if they have more than two links, they get bypassed.
We’re working on a few more options to help combat the spam, but I think these three will help dramatically decrease the amount of spam we’re dealing with right now.
Stay tuned for more updates on this!
-Eric Odom
