Maria’s Guides

(I just write ‘em — I don’t name ‘em.)

The revision to my Excel 2007 Visual QuickStart Guide was shipped to the printer this week. My editor expects the book to be in stores by year-end.

The book is a raw beginners guide to Excel. This version covers Excel 2007, which will be widely available at January month-end. The previous edition, which is still available and has been selling very well since its publication over two years ago, covers Excel 2003 for Windows and Excel 2004 for Macintosh. I expect both editions of the book to sell side by side at least until Excel for Macintosh is revised — whenever that may be.

For more information about the book and downloadable files, visit the Excel QuickProject area of this site.

Interested in buying the book? Check it out at Amazon.com.

Technorati Tags: Excel, Office, Vista, Windows

I update some software to help keep spammers off the site — and preserve my bandwidth.

Miraz introduced me to the Bad Behavior WordPress plugin some time ago, and after ascertaining that it did indeed work with a GoDaddy.com hosting account (my hosting ISP), I installed it on all of my WordPress-based sites. What I saw was an immediate reduction in the amount of spam that Spam Karma was catching. That wasn’t because it made Spam Karma less effective; it was because less spam was actually accepted by WordPress for moderation. I can verify this by checking the Bad Behavior stats — it catches roughly 7,000 potential spam hits a week on just one of my sites. That means my server doesn’t have to work so hard and, as a result, it can be more responsive to visitors.

One of the drawbacks to hosting multiple sites on a budget is the limitations imposed by my ISP for my level of hosting. I’m allowed 100 concurrent hits — to all sites on my hosting account. I have two very busy sites online and I think they sometimes fight with each other for bandwidth. This hasn’t been a problem until lately — the other day I started getting Error 503 messages (server busy) when trying to access my sites.

I investigated and discovered that at the time I was trying to view my site, Spam Karma had caught roughly 200 spam messages in the span of 3 minutes. No wonder my site was busy. Spam Karma was fighting off spammers. But what the heck was Bad Behavior doing? Sleeping on the job?

I went to the Bad Behavior Web site and noticed an update that should resolve things. More spammer-stopping power. I downloaded and installed it. If the Error 503 messages become less common and Spam Karma catches less spam, I know it’s doing its job.

The point is this (yes, there is a point): if you have a WordPress blog that allows comments, having spam protection is more than just preventing your site from being filled up with spam comments. It’s protecting your bandwidth. And for that, Bad Behavior seems like a good solution. Just be sure that you have the latest version.

And, if you find your spam prevention software helpful, be sure to send a few euros to the developers to keep them interested in keeping the software up-to-date.

December 14 Update: I just did some more research over at Lunacy Unleashed, Web site for Michael Hampton, the developer of Bad Behavior. His article, “Spam Surge,” seems to collaborate what I’ve been experiencing. Apparently, the spam surge also affects e-mail accounts. (My e-mail spam increased considerably about a month ago but has since tapered off to manageable levels.)