Blog Tools
Spam Spam Go Away
Everyone who has a blog knows that pain of dealing with spam comments and trackbacks. Of course, the more popular the blog is the higher the spam content it may receive each day. For this blog, I think it has about 3000 spam comments caught by Akismet since it started last May. Now while Akismet [...]
Everyone who has a blog knows that pain of dealing with spam 
comments and trackbacks. Of course, the more popular the blog is the higher the spam content it may receive each day. For this blog, I think it has about 3000 spam comments caught by Akismet since it started last May. Now while Akismet does a very nice job of catching spam comments from your blog, we cannot ignore the fact that we still always double check it, in case it catches false postives. Right? Although normally the rates are very low then and it seems that Akismet has improved so much since the day it started.
So here now I am going to show you other guides/tips that can help you fight and reduce spam on your blog:
- Comment-Timeout - I am pretty surprised not a lot of people use this plugin but what this plugin does is simply close the comment form of the blog posts that are older than 3 months or so. You can set it to whatever you may wish for but certainly its a nice plugin that helped me reduce the number of spams I receive every day. Comment-Timeout is a nice plugin I swear!
- Hold a Comment if it has 1 link! - Now this is what i have just learned last month. Basically there will come a time a guy will follow you and comment genuinely. In wordpress, upon approving the comment of a certain guy/email, it basically just accepts each and every comment of that guy then. So after quite some time, the spammer then use that to spread spam links on my blog and fortunately I thwarted him before he could do so much. Always hold a comment for moderation if it contains a link!
- Use the Comment Moderation Box - In the settings of your discussion in wordpress admin, you’ll see a semi-sized box wherein you can put ip, emails and etc. What you might want to put here is the list of proxies provided by TOR. You can also search for other open proxy ips and try to list them as well. Proxy is a great way to surf anonymously but oh boy spammers just take advantage of it so well!
- Wp-ban - This is another wordpress plugin and it does display a custom ban message when the banned IP, IP range, host name or referer url trys to visit you blog. You can also exclude certain IPs from being banned. There will be statistics recordered on how many times they attemp to visit your blog. It allows wildcard matching too. I don’t use it here, but if you have a very popular blog or maybe you are the target of the spammers, then it can be useful.
- Trackbacks - trackbacks are one easy way to spam and spread links on other people’s site. What happens is that spam blogs will send a trackback to you w/your own content. Before I wasn’t aware w/it, so I just approve every trackbacks I receive. You must always take a look at a site before accepting their trackspams!
So that’s it. What you will find out is that most of the solutions are just inside wordpress itself. If you know a little programming then you expand things more depending on your knowledge. Just always back up! 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Make Some Money By Placing Banners
I am not really a fan of these “place a banner” and get monthly payments or anything like that but sometimes stuffs like this will help people or new people build something for startup and it does not cause anything to join. So I thought I would be making a post about it.
Well What I [...]
I am not really a fan of these “place a banner” and get monthly payments or anything like that but sometimes stuffs like this will help people or new people build something for startup and it does not cause anything to join. So I thought I would be making a post about it.
Well What I am talking about here is freebies 4 Webmaster. Last July they contacted me introducing their services, I though they were just scam or maybe they are really so I turned down their offer. But then last month I was playing with monetization here in this blog and you may notice me placing different things on the sidebar and doing A and B testing. Then one friend referred this now to me. I pasted the 468X60 on the lower part of the sidebar. I did it last August 20 and then yesterday I received 10 British Pounds from them which means they really pay. They do also promise to pay monthly for keeping that banner on my site. Lets see.
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(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5) Loading ...
What’s up Max Banner Ads!
So everyone seems to be intrigued with this new plugin from Maxpress. Max Banner Ads is a plugin that makes it very easy to add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog. The good thing is you don’t need to alter any codes in your theme. Sounds good right? That is just the prelude. Another [...]
So everyone seems to be intrigued with this new plugin from Maxpress. Max Banner Ads is a plugin that makes it very easy to add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog. The good thing is you don’t need to alter any codes in your theme. Sounds good right? That is just the prelude. Another thing that it does is that it automatically tracks the statistics of the specific banner. It shows the impression, CTR and so on. After reading Chow’s post about it I immediately take a look at the site, grab my copy of it and installed it.
As you can see, the plugin automatically lets you add banners from almost everywhere in your site. You can rotate as many as you want. And add the fact that it is free. Yes, it’s free. So you’re thinking now everything about it is positive? Well not quite. The plugin after activating it, actually is not still activated. You will be asked to subscribe to Maxpress newsletter, and it’s not optional. If you don’t want to, then you cannot use the plugin! For me I find very annoying. That simple subscription would probably have a huge impact on those who want to use the plugin. Another thing is that under the banner there is a link ala Project Wonderful. As of now I haven’t tried if you can remove the linkback to their site. Geez…
So all in all I find this plugin still useful. Though, OIO direct is still better by far, Max Banner Ads is free and would be very beneficial to those who do not have a $37. Yes, the subscription looks spammy and the linkback is annoying but sure the plugin worths a great look. If you have any other things to say about this plugin then say it…
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