Category Archives: WordPress

Content related to WordPress as a tool for blogging and content management.

How to Embed a Tweet in a Blog Post or Website

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Finding and using a new feature on Twitter.com.

Twitter’s getting a facelift. In fact, as I write this, I’m one of a limited number of early adopters who have sped the arrival of the new version by installing and using the iPhone (in my case) or Android app.

The new Twitter is a dramatic change in the interface — one I plan to review in a video for Lynda.com soon. In the meantime, I’m picking out a few new features to explore in detail here in Maria’s Guides.

In this post, I’ll explore the new ability to embed a tweet — like the one shown here — within a blog post or web page.

  1. On Twitter.com, point to the tweet you want to embed and then click the Open link that appears to open it. (You could also simply double-click the tweet.)
    Open the Tweet
  2. Click the Details link to display the tweet in its own window.
    Click the Details Link
  3. Click the Embed this Tweet link.
    Click Embed this Tweet
  4. The Embed this Tweet pop-up window appears. It has three tabs:
    • HTML enables you to embed the tweet in a blog post or website using HTML. You select the alignment option you want by clicking a button and then copy and paste the code at the top of the tab. In this example, I’ve clicked Right because I want the tweet right aligned (as you see above).
      HTML Embed Code
    • Shortcode enables you to embed the tweet in a blog post on a blogging platform that supports short codes, such as WordPress. Again, set the alignment option you want by clicking a button and then copy and past the code at the top of the tab.
      Shortcode
    • Link displays a direct link to the tweet that you can copy and paste anywhere you like: email message, Facebook, Google+, comment form, or HTML editor to create your own link manually.
      Link

    In this example, I simply pasted the code in the HTML tab into the beginning of this blog post, which I wrote in HTML (I’m a bit old-fashioned that way). If you use WordPress and prefer Rich Text mode, you can do the same thing with the shortcode.

That’s all there is to it.

What’s handy about this is that not only does it display the tweet in its entirety with the tweeter’s profile picture and name, but it has live links to follow that person on Twitter, Reply, Retweet, and Favorite. Cool, no?

Let me teach you more about Twitter!

Get more from your software.You can watch seven videos from my Twitter Essential Training course for free. Click here to get started.

Comment Moderation: Fighting Spam and Trolls

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A few tips from a long-time blogger.

As any blogger with even a slightly popular blog can tell you, good comment moderation is an absolute requirement to maintain a good, readable blog.

The way I see it, comment moderation serves two purposes:

  • It prevents your blog from being an advertising platform for people who don’t contribute real content. I’m not just talking about obvious spam here, either.
  • It prevents your blog from being a platform for offensive or abusive people who don’t contribute real content. And yes, I am talking about trolls here.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these two points.

Comments by Spammers

There are two kinds of comment spam.

One type — the most prevalent — is mostly automated spam posted by software commonly referred to as spambots. Once your blog gets on the radar (so to speak), automated spam can be quite significant. This blog, for example, attracts more than 500 automated spam comments a day.

This kind of spam is pretty easy to recognize. One type, for example, includes multiple links for things like online gambling, prescription medication, or pornography. The other type puts its link in the comment form’s URL field and then fills the comment field with text that may or may not make sense but has nothing to do with the content of the original post. Here’s an example from my post titled “Five Tips for Composing a More Effective Social Networking Bio“:

I precisely had to thank you so much all over again. I am not sure the things that I could possibly have accomplished in the absence of the entire tricks contributed by you on my problem. It truly was a very frightening case for me personally, nevertheless viewing your specialized manner you handled the issue forced me to leap over delight. I’m just happy for the assistance and believe you are aware of a great job that you’re getting into training other individuals via a site. More than likely you haven’t encountered any of us.

Huh? I get hundreds of comments like this every day.

It should be noted that a lot of this spam appears on posts that may be quite old. This particular one appeared on a post that was 2-1/2 years old. This is one reason why bloggers use plugins to automatically turn off the commenting feature on older posts.

Fortunately, spam prevention tools can detect and catch 99% of this kind of spam. I use Akismet on my WordPress site and it does a great job of catching and corralling this garbage so it never has a chance to appear on my blog. If you’re not using a spam prevention tool and are manually going through this crap, what are you waiting for? Don’t you have better things to do with your time?

The other kind of spam is more insidious. It’s posted by a real person and it looks like a legitimate comment. But its sole purpose is to promote a product, service, or Web site — not to engage you or other blog readers in a conversation about the original post’s topic.

In many cases, the spammer doesn’t put any real effort into his comment. It might contain a sentence or two that’s vaguely related to the post. The spam delivery is in the commenter’s name and URL. Rather than being something like “John” or “Mary Smith,” it’ll be something like “John’s Carpet Service” or “Discount Vitamin Shack.” The URL will be the URL for the site John or Mary want to promote. In most cases, the email address will be something that’s likely fake or never checked for incoming mail — usually a Gmail or Yahoo! account — but sometimes a legitimate-looking email account is included.

To me, this is a gray area — is it a legitimate comment or spam? Considering the content and purpose of the comment should guide you. Your site’s comment policy should help; I’ll get to that in a moment.

Trolls

A far worse problem these days is what many people refer to as trolls. Trolls are people who post offensive or controversial commentary on blogs or discussion forums. Their goal is apparently to make themselves look smart or superior at the expensive of you or other commenters. By posting comments, they’re “trolling” for an argument — much like a fisherman might go trolling to catch fish.

This is where good comment moderation is vital to your blog.

You see, if you allow offensive commentary — including personal attacks on yourself or blog commenters — you do two things:

  • You discourage legitimate commenters from sharing their thoughts. After all, they could be the victim of the next troll attack.
  • You encourage more trolling activity by current and future trolls. After all, you let one offensive comment out there, you’re likely to allow others. They see your blog as a good place to troll for new victims.

Is that something you really want?

I have seen too many blogs and forums completely devastated by the comments posted by trolls and the offensive and defensive comments posted in response. Back in the early days of the Internet and newsgroups, we used to refer to this as “flame wars.” There’s nothing useful or productive about the comments by trolls or the resulting flame wars. Why allow them on your blog?

The Freedom of Speech Argument

The biggest defense against firm moderation that would prevent trolling activities is that it’s “censorship” and that you’re violating the commenter’s “freedom of speech.” They often use the phrase “First Amendment Rights.”

Let’s look briefly at the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]

Where exactly does it say that I have to put up with offensive commentary on my blog? All it says is that the government can’t make a law abridging the freedom of speech. I’m not the government, I’m not making a law.

So I don’t think “free speech” is a valid argument. After all, should anyone have the right to say anything they want — no matter how offensive — on your blog?

If people want to spout hate and offensive commentary, they can do it on their own blog.

Creating a Comment Policy

One way to fight back against spammers and trolls is to create and uphold a site comment policy. This policy should clearly state what is and/or isn’t allowed in the comments on your blog. Linking to this policy in an obvious place — or even placing a short version of it right above or below the comment form — will make it clear that you don’t tolerate spam or bad behavior.

Want some examples of good comment policies? Here are a few to give you ideas:

  • An Eclectic Mind. This is the comment policy for my personal blog. It’s a bit wordy — what do you expect from me? — but it does cover all the bases. You might also be interested in another post on my blog, “I Love Blog Comments Here.”
  • Stonekettle Station. Jim Wright doesn’t put up with crap either. That’s the short version of his comment policy. The long version, which address trolls and free speech, can be found here.
  • Whatever. John Scalzi’s comment policy. Simple and to-the-point.
  • Lorelle on WordPress. Lorelle knows more about WordPress blogging than I ever will. Here’s her site’s comment policy. You might also be interested in another post on her blog, “Comments on Comments.”

This topic was also addressed back in 2007 by Lorelle VanFossen in The Blog Herald.

Do you have a site comment policy you want to share with readers here? Post it in the comments for this post.

Maintaining Order

Creating a policy isn’t enough. You also have to maintain it. That means objectively reviewing every comment on your site and deleting the ones that violate the policy.

Yes, deleting them.

My advice is not to edit them, or allow them but reply with a warning, or do anything else. If a comment violates your policy, just delete it.

Don’t even send the commenter an email message telling them that you’ve deleted their message and why. If a commenter lacks the courtesy to be civil and follow your established rules on your blog, does he deserve any courtesy from you?

More important than that is the entire concept of “feeding the trolls.” When you respond in any way to a troll, you encourage more trolling activity. You see, these people just can’t let it go. They see any response as having a victim on the hook and they keep up their trolling behavior.

Ignore them and they will go away. Really.

You need to keep this in mind no matter where you see trolls. If you can’t delete their offensive crap, just ignore it. (Or, if it’s offensive enough, contact the site owner directly and tell him/her what you think and how it makes you feel about their blog/site/forum. A responsible site owner will take care of the problem.)

And if the whole concept of trolls is new to you, I urge you to read the entire “Troll (Internet)” entry on Wikipedia. It’s excellent and it clearly shows how bad these people can be for an Internet community like a blog.

Steps to Take

To sum up, I want to review the steps you might want to take to moderate and control the comments on your blog.

  1. Install and use spam prevention tools. Akismet is the best one (in my opinion) for a WordPress blog. It’s free.
  2. Write and post a site comment policy. Use the ones linked to above to give you ideas.
  3. Set up your blog to require moderation of all comments. On a WordPress blog, you do this in Discussion Settings.
  4. Regularly check for and approve (or delete) new comments. I’ve created a bookmark in my browser to quickly go to the comment moderation panel for each of my sites. I check for comments every morning and sometimes during the day so few comments are ever held in moderation for long.
  5. Resist the urge to respond to trolls on your blog. Don’t respond in comments or in email. You will regret it.
  6. Ignore the comments posted by trolls on other sites and in online forums. Don’t feed the trolls.

Please use the comments for this post to share your thoughts, experiences, and questions about this topic.

Category Feeds Being Removed

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As part of the site revision process, I’ve decided to do away with the category-specific feeds. These feeds, which cover Excel, Mac OS, Word, and WordPress content, are being utilized by less than 100 people. If you’re reading this message in your feed reader, YOU might be one of them.

Within a month or so, these feeds will simply not work. Delete them from your reader.

If you want to continue receiving content from this site via RSS, please subscribe to the main feed, using one of the following URLs:

Photos from Facebook

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Use your Facebook photo galleries on your WordPress-based site.

This past summer, I built a simple WordPress-based website for a friend of mine’s business. A designer/developer wanted $8K to build the site and he just couldn’t see spending that much money. While I know that the site I built for him isn’t nearly as polished as what the designers would have created, it certainly meets his primary needs: to provide basic information about his business to people who need it. You can see and judge for yourself here.

WordPress is an excellent tool for building Web sites. What I like about it is that once the site has been set up with the design and features needed, anyone with Admin access can modify its contents. That means that when he has a price change or hours change or some other change, he can go in and change it for himself. No need to bug me or wait for me to get around to it.

But what’s even better than that is the multitude of plugins available to add or enhance content.

Here’s an example. My friend has had a Facebook presence for some time now and his company is “liked” by a considerable number of people. They frequently check in to see what’s new. Yesterday, I helped him add about 10 photos of some work he’s been doing. The photos on Facebook were a big hit with his Facebook friends. I wanted to add the photos to his website. I poked around the plugin directory at WordPress.org and found one called Facebook Page Photo Gallery. This was even better than I’d hoped: it would take the photos I’d already uploaded to Facebook and present them on his WordPress-based site.

I decided to test it here before I went live on his site. I soon discovered that it works only with public photo galleries on Facebook — which meant it would not work with my personal Wall photos. (It probably would if I could figure out how to tweak the settings on Facebook, but I really don’t think it’s worth the bother.) It would, however, work with the Wall photos for Flying M Air‘s Facebook page. And it worked very well, as you can see here:

Did you notice that when you point to an image, it displays the caption?

This is a huge time-saver for me. Rather than have to re-upload and arrange the photos on the website, I can enter a WordPress shortcode with a few variables and a wonderful image display is created automatically. What else could I ask for?

How to Automatically Post Your Google Calendar Events to Twitter

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Get those events tweeted automatically when you create them.

I recently helped a friend set up a new Web site for his small but growing winery. I also set him up with Google Calendar and a WordPress plugin so he could create events and have them appear on his site’s sidebar in a calendar. You can see how this looks at BeaumontCellars.com as well as on one of my sites, FlyingMAir.com.

Although he’s not exactly “computer savvy,” he does do a lot of texting with his iPhone. So I set him up with Twitter and linked his Twitter account to his winery’s Facebook page. He can tweet what’s going on and its automatically posted to his Facebook page’s wall. This has been a huge help for him because it makes it so easy to update Facebook, where he has quite a few fans.

The next logical step was to have his Google Calendar events posted on Twitter so they could also get posted on Facebook. After a little bit of research and experimentation, I came up with this method.

Step 1: Create and Configure Your Google Calendar

The first step is to set up your Google calendar for sharing and copy the link for the calendar’s RSS feed.

  1. If you don’t already have a Google account, set one up and log in.
  2. Go to google.com/calendar. You may have to follow additional instructions to create and access your calendar; just follow the prompts that appear onscreen.
  3. If necessary, create a calendar to share events with Twitter.
  4. Calendar MenuIn the list of calendars on the left side of the window, point to the calendar you want to share and click the menu button that appears. A pop-up menu offers options.
  5. Choose Share this Calendar.


  6. Make PublicIn the page that appears, make sure the check box marked “Make this calendar public” is toggled on.
  7. Click the Calendar Details link.


  8. Calendar AddressScroll down to the Calendar Address area.


  9. Calendar AddressClick the XML button. A Calendar Address dialog pops up with the address for your calendar.
  10. Right-click the link and choose Copy Link from the menu that appears. The link is now in the clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere.
  11. Close the Calendar Address dialog.

Step 2: Set Up the Feed in TwitterFeed

Next, you’ll set up the calendar’s feed in TwitterFeed.

  1. If you don’t already have a TwitterFeed account, go to TwitterFeed.com to set one up and log in.
  2. In the Feed Dashboard window, click the Create New Feed button. The New Feed screen appears.
  3. Name Feed and Add SourceIn the Feed Name box, enter any name you like for the calendar feed.
  4. Click in the Blog URL or RSS Feed URL box to position the insertion point there and press Command-V (Mac OS) or Control-V (Windows)-V to paste in the calendar address you copied to the clipboard in step 10 above.
  5. Click the test rss feed button. A green message “Feed parsed OK” should appear. (If it doesn’t, you’ll need to make sure the link you copied is correct and try again.)
  6. Make sure the Active Check box is turned on.
  7. Click Advanced Settings to display additional options.
  8. You can set these options as you see fit. My suggestions are as follows:
    • Choose Title from the pop-up menu in the Post Content area. (Remember, tweets are short; the description probably won’t fit within the 140 character limitation.)
    • Make sure the Post Link check box is turned on in the Post Content area.
    • Enter “New Event:” in the Post Prefix box.
  9. Click Continue to Step 2.
  10. In the Feed Publishing screen, click the Twitter link.
  11. Choose Twitter AccountChoose an account under Authenticated Twitter Account or, if the account is not listed, click the Authenticate Twitter button to log into the Twitter account you want to use.
  12. Click the Create Service button. After a moment, the name of your Twitter account appears beside the Twitter link, along with an checked Active check box.
  13. If you wanted to post to other social networking services, you can use their links to set them up.
  14. When you’re finished, click the All Done button.

Step 3: Test

Finally, test to make sure it works as expected.

  1. Go back to your Google Calendar and, if necessary, log in.
  2. Create a calendar event. Be sure to set the date and time and include a description. If you have more than one Google calendar, be sure to assign the event to the calendar you’re sharing with Twitter.
  3. Sign out of Google. You want to be able to check the event and see it as anyone else would.
  4. Tweet
    Monitor your Twitter account. If you did not make any changes to the frequency setting on Twitter Feed, the event should be posted to your Twitter account within 30 minutes.


  5. Event DetailsClick the link in the tweet. A Google Calendar page with the details you set for the event appears in a browser window.

Conclusion

To me, there’s a huge benefit it being able to post something one place and have it appear automatically in others. Using a tool like TwitterFeed to connect Twitter to RSS feeds is a great way to automate Twitter posting for your Web site or business.

Get more from your software.Want to learn more about using Twitter? Learn online at Lynda.com. Recently revised and expanded, my Twitter Essential Training course includes more than three hours of video training material that’ll help you get more out of Twitter. Check it out. If you’re not a Lynda.com subscriber, be sure to visit to try some of the free videos. I think you’ll be hooked.

How to Disable Hot Linking to Images

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Roll up your sleeves and prepare to edit your .htaccess file.

Important Note:
Messing with your Web site or blog’s .htaccess file is very dangerous. Indeed, if you make an error, the entire site may stop working. Keep that in mind when using these instructions. I will not be held responsible for any problems that result from using this code.

Hot linking is when another Web site links directly to images or other files that reside on your Web server to embed them in their own Web pages or make them accessible to their own site visitors. For example, someone may like an image on your Web site that he/she wants to show off on his/her own. Rather than linking to the page on your site that displays the image, they might use the HTML IMG SRC tag to embed the image on their own site.

There are two problems with this:

  • In many cases, because the image actually appears on the other site, visitors are led to believe that the image belongs to that site’s owner — instead of you. Sometimes the other site owner might provide credit or even a link back to your site. But often times he/she does not. In my book, that’s image theft.
  • Because the image still resides on your server, each time the image is viewed on the other site, your server is required to serve up the image. That uses up your bandwidth. Obviously, if this happens a lot, you might see a slow-down in your site’s response time or your hosting company may begin to charge additional bandwidth fees. In other words, you’re paying to host images on someone else’s site.

The best way to stop hot linking is to modify your site’s .htaccess file to include code that prevents it. In researching this problem, I found several different collections of code. The one that I wound up using as a basis for my final code (shown below) can be found at “How to Disable Hot Linking” on the Online Marketing Blog.

Here’s my code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?<em>mydomain.com</em>/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png|pdf)$ http://<em>myotherdomain.com/images/StopStealing.jpg</em> [R]

Here’s how it works:

RewriteEngine on

Enables mod_rewrite.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

Allows requests made directly for the image without a referrer. You would include this line if you wanted to allow requests from browsers and other sources without referrers. (I commented out this line in my file, but may allow it.)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?<em>mydomain.com</em>/.*$ [NC]

Allows requests made from your Web site. Obviously, you’d replace mydomain.com with your domain.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]

Allows requests made from Google and search engines. If you don’t want your images to appear in search results, don’t include these two lines.

RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png)$ http://<em>myotherdomain.com/images/StopStealing.jpg</em> [R]

Prevents images with .jpg, .gif, and .png extensions from appearing on pages with any other referrer. Instead, it shows the image shown here.

If you don’t want to include the image, you can use this line instead to result in a broken image icon:

RewriteRule .(jpg|gif|png)$ - [F]

Keep in mind that using this approach will prevent images from appearing in feed readers, too, so it’s not a good idea if you share your images with others via RSS.

Of course, to add or modify a .htaccess file, you need to know how. That’s beyond the scope of anything I’ll ever write. These instructions assume you already have some idea of how to do this. If you want to learn more about using .htaccess to control access to your Web site, be sure to check out this tutorial.

One more thing…please don’t expect me to help you debug your .htaccess file. Believe me, I know only enough about .htaccess to be dangerous; you would be better off without my help. Good luck!

Three Productivity Tips from a Long-Time Blogger

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A guest post for WordCast.

About this Post
I wrote this post to complement my participation in a Blog Productivity panel podcast for WordCast. I was invited by Lorelle (of WordPress fame), and I really enjoyed participating. If you listen to the podcast, it’ll soon become clear that I’m the “odd man out” (so to speak) in that I do things a bit differently than the rest of the pack. The podcast is full of great tips from all panelists and definitely worth a listen if you’re serious about blogging. This post appeared on the WordCast site earlier in the week.

I might not be the most influential blogger you’ve ever heard of — if you’ve heard of me at all. Or the most prolific. But I’m probably one of the most experienced: I’ve been blogging since October 15, 2003.

Still, I was extremely pleased to be asked to join a panel of expert bloggers for a recent WordCast podcast about blogging productivity. The folks at WordCast asked me to follow-up with a blog post sharing some of my tips. I can’t help thinking that my co-panelist’s tips were better, but here’s what I have to offer.

1. Create and Stick to a Blogging Schedule

One of the most important things about keeping a blog is adding new content regularly. “Regularly” is a tricky word. It doesn’t have to mean every day. It just means often enough to keep your readers checking in for more.

For example, suppose your life gives you enough free time that you can post once or twice a day for a few weeks or months. Suddenly, however, life takes as turn and that blogging time is gone — or you get bored with your blog and put it on the back burner. Go a week without posting something new and the folks who check in regularly for your words of wisdom may stop checking.

While I realize this is an extreme example, it does illustrate my point: regular readers will pick up on the rhythm on your posting and expect you to stick with it. When you don’t, they move on.

The way to prevent this from happening is to create a posting goal and schedule time to write. Perhaps you think twice a week is a good frequency. Pick two days a week — Tuesday and Friday? — pick a time that works for you — at breakfast with your morning coffee? — and blog on schedule. Make it part of your routine, part of your life.

I try to get a new blog post out at least five days a week. My schedule has me sitting in front of my laptop with my morning coffee every morning I can. Since I’m an early riser — usually up by 6 AM — I usually get my blog post done before I start my work day.

Got something coming up that’s likely to break your schedule? Vacation? Business trip? Family commitments? Write extra posts when you can and schedule them to appear in the future. This is particularly handy if your topic is not time-sensitive or you know you’ll be unable to blog on schedule in the future. Here are two suggestions:

  • Long posts can often be cut it into multiple parts with each part scheduled to appear on a different day. Not only does this stretch a single work out to fill a posting schedule, but if done properly, your readers will make sure they come back for the subsequent parts.
  • Do double-duty and write two posts at a sitting, scheduling one of them to appear in the future. If you’re able to write a lot very quickly, you can actually write a week’s worth of content at one sitting. No one has to know that each day’s new post was actually written some time ago.

2. Take Notes

How do you know what to blog about? One way is to take notes. As ideas and thoughts come to you — either from the workings of your own mind or from something you read online or heard in a conversation — jot them down. If you spend enough time thinking and reading and listening, you should be able to accumulate plenty of ideas.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t use software or web-based tools such as Evernote to organize notes and clippings. I use paper. I keep spiral-bound notebooks on my desk and in my computer bag and make notes as things come to me. When I’ve processed the note — blogged about it, made the call, tracked down the Web site, ordered the product, etc. — I recycle the paper. The huge file containing all my thoughts and ideas is my blog.

The point is, it doesn’t matter how you take notes. The important thing is to take them. Keep track of the little ideas that pop into your head when you’re in the shower or driving. Write down the key words of a conversation that’ll help you remember what you found so intriguing. Then, when you’re ready to compose a blog post, you’ll have most of the material you need to get it written.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking software tools. I just can’t be bothered climbing up the learning curve to use them effectively. Pen and paper works for me.

3. Automate!

There are lots of software tools and solutions out there to help automate tasks. After all, isn’t that what computers are for? To do the work and make our lives easier?

Here are three examples of tools I use to automate blogging-related tasks:

  • Delicious with Postalicious. Delicious is a bookmarking Web site. You read a Web page, want to remember it, and create a Delicious bookmark with its URL and a description and tags you specify. I’ve been using Delicious for years, since it could be found only at http://del.icio.us. Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that creates a blog post based on your new Delicious entries and the descriptions you provide. It then automatically posts the links entry to your blog at a predetermined time. You can find plenty of examples on my blog. Postalicious also works with other services, such as ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes. I rely on this combination of tools to collect and share Web-based content that I found interesting and want to share with my readers. The format isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly good enough for my needs. Oh, and one more thing: I use the RSS feed for my Delicious bookmarks to generate a list of recently bookmarked pages in the sidebar of my blog.
  • Twitterfeed with Twitter. Twitter is an incredible tool for communicating short snippets of information with other people all over the world. (If you haven’t heard of it or tried it, crawl out from under that rock, brush the dust and cobwebs off your clothes, and join the rest of the social networking community.) Twitterfeed is a Web-based service that scans your blog’s RSS feed and tweets links to your new posts. This is a great, automatic way to tell your Twitter followers about new content on your blog.
  • Feedburner’s Email Subscriptions. Feedburner is a service that modifies your RSS feed to add features. Although it was started as an independent service, it’s now part of Google, so you need a free Google account to take advantage of its features. The Email Subscriptions feature creates e-mail messages based on your RSS feed and sends them out to subscribers. The subscription list is maintained inside Feedburner, so you don’t have to deal with it; users can add and remove themselves without bothering you. This is a great way for folks who want to read your content regularly to get it on a timely basis without using RSS readers. Best of all, once you set it up, it’s automatic.

Conclusion

When thinking about blog productivity, it all comes down to working smart. Make blogging part of your life schedule. Keep notes about the topics you find interesting so you have plenty of topics to write about when you’re ready to blog. And automate tasks whenever possible.

These are just three tips. Give it some thought — or read the blog posts of my co-panelists here — for more.

About the Author

Maria Langer is a freelance writer who has been writing about computers and the Internet since 1990. She’s the co-author of the first-ever book on WordPress and has since authored three WordPress video titles for Lynda.com. Maria’s also a commercial helicopter pilot and serious amateur photographer. Her blog, An Eclectic Mind, can be found at aneclecticmind.com.

Got a Keyboard? Use it.

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A blog post should be more than just screenshots of what other people Tweeted.

This morning, as I sat drinking my coffee, I began my usual ritual of checking out some of the links tweeted overnight by the people I follow. One of them was about the iPad. Interested in the iPad as my future ebook reader, I followed the link.

I wound up on a blog post that consisted primarily of screenshots of Twitter. The blogger had posted a question on Twitter about the iPad and then sat back and captured screenshots of the responses as they were tweeted.

I call that lazy blogging.

It was also extremely tedious to read. So tedious, in fact, that I stopped reading after the first scroll down. I did continue scrolling to see if there was some content added by the blogger, but there was so little of it that I wound up simply closing the browser window and getting on with my day.

And then I realized how much it bugged me that there was someone out there passing off screenshots of Twitter responses as a blog “post.”

There is so much crap on the Internet today. Huge quantities of it. I don’t “surf” the net. My Web activity is limited to looking up things I need to know about and following what appears to be interesting links that I receive from friends and business associates verbally, via e-mail, and via Twitter. I don’t want to spend my day wading through the crap online. I want the good stuff.

A blogger should not simply regurgitate what’s readily available on the Web. If I wanted to know what Twitter users thought of the iPad, I’d use Twitter’s built-in search feature — which is also part of Nambu, my preferred Twitter client — and set up a search. I’d then read the results myself. I don’t need to go to a blog to read the same stuff. As screenshots, for Pete’s sake! Hell, if I were at home with my miserably slow Internet connection, the damn page would have taken five minutes to load!

A blogger’s job is to both inform and provide analysis. A summary sentence at the top of 20 screenshots that simply says, “Many people think lack of multi-tasking is a deal breaker,” doesn’t do much for me. And I certainly don’t need to see those 20 screenshots. I get it. You’re not making this up. All these Twitter users said it. I guess it must be true.

And it’s immensely ironic that this post was retweeted. As if it had value. WTF?

My point: if you call yourself a blogger and want to add something of value to the Web, dust off your keyboard and use it.

On Becoming a “Power Blogger”

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I define a new [to me] phrase.

Last week, I was one of four guest panelists on the WordCast podcast. The topic was blog productivity — tips and tricks for blogging more efficiently — and a phrase I’d never heard before came up in the discussion: power blogger.

Let me take a few steps back before I move forward. Although I’ve written extensively about blogging from the blogger point of view and I’ve also co-authored and authored various WordPress training materials (books and videos), I’m not someone who keeps up-to-date with the world of blogging. I don’t know the buzzwords or phrases, I don’t follow the hot trends. I just obtain the tools, use them the way they work for me, and try to publish new blog posts regularly. Along the way, I provide a sprinkling of advice for bloggers in my own blog posts.

So the phrase power blogger was brand new to me.

And meaningless.

When the question, “What advice can you give to people who want to become power bloggers?” came up, I felt a tingling of stage fright. Surely I’d sound like an idiot if I admitted I had no idea what the phrase meant.

Fortunately, another panelist spoke up. I listened carefully to glean meaning from his response. And what I learned was that he — and the others — considered the quantity of blog posts a major component of power blogging. By their definition — at least one post a day — I was a power blogger!

I sure don’t feel like one.

When it was my turn to speak, I proposed my own definition of power blogger. I don’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:

The number of blog posts a blogger publishes should have nothing to do with whether he’s a power blogger. Instead, it should be the influence the blogger has over his readership and beyond. What’s important is whether a blog post makes a difference in the reader’s life. Does it teach? Make the reader think? Influence his decisions? If a blogger can consistently do any of that, he’s a power blogger.

I recall comparing Twitter — which is, after all, “microblogging” — to blogging. Someone can tweet dozens of times a day, but if there isn’t any value in what he’s tweeting, what good is it? There are plenty of bloggers out there simply rehashing the same material, over and over, without adding anything new to the mix. They might post five or ten times a day. But if it isn’t worth reading, how can you consider them power bloggers?

And I guess that’s the advice I want to share in this post: If you’re serious about blogging, don’t go for quantity. Go for quality.

Make a difference with what you post.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.9: Getting Your MySQL Database Up-to-Date

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A tiny glitch for those of us with old databases.

Upgrade Admin PanelOne of the things I love about the most recent releases of WordPress is the automatic upgrade feature. Not only does the software tell you when a new version is available, but it offers a one-click upgrade through the use of the Upgrade Automatically button in the Upgrade WordPress administration panel. I’ve been using this feature regularly since it first appeared — after backing up my WordPress database and content files, of course — and have never had a problem.

Until yesterday.

Last night, when I attempted to upgrade my main blog, An Eclectic Mind, I got the following error message:

Old PHP Warning

I knew immediately why this error had appeared. My blog is so old that MySQL 5 wasn’t available when it was created. The available version was 4.0.27, which is what I installed. But the new version of WordPress needs a newer version of MySQL. Upgrading wouldn’t be possible until I upgraded my MySQL database.

I called GoDaddy, my hosting company, and spoke to someone in technical support. She said that the only way to upgrade the database was to back up my database, create a new database with version MySQL 5.0, and restore the old database to the new database file. I could then point my config.php file to the new database and, with a lot of luck, everything would work out fine.

So I initiated a backup last night using GoDaddy’s backup utility. (I usually use the WordPress Backup Plugin.) I got tired of waiting for it to finish, and went to bed. This morning, I’m restoring that database into a new file created with MySQL 5.0. And now, as I type this, I’m modifying the config.php file to point to the new database, user name, and host name.

Drum roll please….

As I open the home page for my blog…it works!

Upgrade CompletedThe upgrade should now go off without a hitch — which it does, as shown here.

Unfortunately, if you’re in the same boat I was in, you’ll need to find out how to update your MySQL database file. Talk to your system administrator or ISP’s technical support department. Every system is different — I use GoDaddy.com so that’s the only system I know how to update. Providing detailed step-by-step instructions for that system would only help other GoDaddy users — and might not work after GoDaddy’s next interface revision.

So I’ll let you track down instructions for your server or ISP on your own. Once you get those instructions, it shouldn’t be difficult to complete the task.

Good luck and enjoy the newest version of WordPress!

Spelling Checkers Don’t Work if You Ignore Them

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Reminding my brain not to block out the red underlines that indicate potential spelling problems.

Check Spelling as You Type has been a built-in feature of many word processors for years. It’s now in most applications I use — including my Web browsers, for Pete’s sake! — and the red squiggly or dotted underlines are an integral part of my writing life.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about — do you live in a cave? — I’m referring to the feature that indicates when a word you’ve typed may have been spelled wrong. This is supposed to flag the word so you can check and, if necessary, correct it.

A Blessing…

I vaguely remember when this feature first appeared in Microsoft Word years ago. It was a blessing — and a curse.

I initially loved the feature because it often identified my typos. I’m a touch typist and can get up to 80 words per minute when I’m tuned in. But those aren’t always error-free words. Check Spelling as You Type was a great feature for finding typos as I worked, eliminating the need to run a spell check periodically or at the end of document creation.

As you might expect, it also found spelling errors. My spelling was always pretty good, so it usually found more typos than actual spelling mistakes. But that’s okay. An error is an error and I want to remove all of them from my work, whenever I can.

…and a Curse

But over the years, I’ve found some problems with the Check Spelling as You Type feature — and spelling checkers in general.

The feature does not identify all typos or spelling errors as errors. For example, suppose you type bit but you really meant but. A spelling checker doesn’t see any problem with that, so it won’t flag it. That means you can’t depend on a spelling checker to proofread your work. (And yes, in case you’re wondering, a grammar checker would likely identify this as a problem. As well as the sentence you’re reading right now, because it isn’t really a proper sentence. And this one, too.)

So you’ve got a feature that makes you lazy by doing about 90% of the proofreading work for you, as you type. If you neglect to do the other 10% of the proofreading work, you could be very embarrassed — especially if you write professionally and editors expect your work to be error-free.

The unflagged error that zaps me most often? Typing it’s instead of its. At least I know what it’s supposed to be.

It’s worse, however, for people who don’t know the correct word. How many times have you seen people use then instead of than? There instead of they’re or their?

The feature has degraded my spelling skills. In the old days, before spelling checkers, I simply knew how to spell. If I wasn’t sure of the spelling of a word I needed, I looked it up in — can you imagine? — a dictionary. It made it worthwhile for me to actually learn how to spell words. Knowing the proper spelling saved me time in the long run.

But now, I simply type the word as I think it might be spelled and wait to see if it’s flagged. If it is, I use a context menu — Control-click or right click the word — to choose the word I meant to type. Yes, it’s convenient. But I seem to be doing it an awful lot more than I used to use a dictionary.

(Perhaps it’s also expanding my vocabulary by making it easier to use words I’m not as familiar with? There’s something there.)

The feature identifies any word it does not know as a potential spelling error. That means that if your document is filled with jargon, technical terms, place names, or other words that do not appear in a dictionary, those words will be flagged as possible errors. The word unflagged, which appeared earlier in this post, was also flagged. Is it an error? Or does my spelling checker simply not recognize it? Seems like a word to me, so I let it go.

And herein lies my biggest problem: I’m so accustomed to seeing words flagged in my documents that I’ve managed to tune out the red underline. (It’s kind of like the way we all tune out advertisements on Web pages these days.) This happened to me just the other day. I typed the word emmerse in a blog post. My offline editing tool flagged it with a red dotted underline — as it just did here. But for some reason, I didn’t see it. I published the post with the error in it. A friend of mine, who referred to himself as a “spelling Nazi,” e-mailed me to point out my error. I meant immerse, of course. He knew that. Readers likely knew that. But I got it wrong and I shouldn’t have. How embarrassing!

Spelling Checker

Here’s a look at the spelling check feature in ecto, my offline blog composition tool of choice. It works just like any other spelling checker. (And yes, I do compose in HTML mode.)

The correct way to go about this is to look for every single possible spelling error and resolve it so those red lines go away. That means learning or adding the unknown word so it’s never flagged again or ignoring it so it doesn’t bother you in this document. All of this should be done with the appropriate menu command. Simply telling your brain to ignore a problem just sets you up to be blind to it when it occurs. That’s not how the software was designed to work.

The Point

This post has a point — most of mine do — and here it is: spelling checkers, including any Check Spelling As You Type feature, are only as good as allow them to be. Use them, but don’t depend on them. Follow up on any flagged words and resolve them using the software so the red underlines go away.

Spelling checkers are just a tool. Like any other tool, it won’t help you if you don’t use it correctly.

MacVoices Interview Now Online

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Scott McNulty and I talk to Chuck Joiner about WordPress.

One of the things I like to do — but don’t get a chance to do very often these days — is talk to podcasters and other media people about the projects I’ve worked on.

MacVoices LogoEarlier this month, I got a chance to do just that with Chuck Joiner, the host of the MacVoices podcast. For the first time ever, Chuck did a double interview, killing two birds with one stone as he spoke to author Scott McNulty and I about WordPress. During the Interview, we talked about our separate WordPress-related projects and how they might be used together to help someone learn the ins and outs of using WordPress.

Here’s the blurb on the MacVoices Web site:

Thinking of starting a blog with WordPress? Maria Langer, the author of Self-Hosting a WordPress Site and WordPress.Com 2.7 Essential Training on Lynda.com and Scott McNulty, the author of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, share some tips from their respective projects to help you make the right choices. Maria and Scott talk about deciding on using WordPress.com or selecting your own host, one-click vs. user installs, why permalink structure is one of the first things you should think about, and finding and customizing a theme for your blog and more. Backup options, favorite plug-ins and why their video and book compliment each other are discussed.

If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can download it directly from its page on the MacVoices Web site.

New on Lynda.com: WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training

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New training videos for WordPress.com users.

I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training.

From the official course description:

The blogging revolution has led to new levels of communication on the information superhighway. WordPress 2.7 Essential Training is the onramp for anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly and easily. Maria Langer, author and veteran blogger, shows how to set up a free WordPress account, create posts, and maintain a blog. She goes on to explore the possibilities WordPress offers for creating blogs that are unique in style and voice. Exercise files accompany the course.

Topics Include:
• Understanding the functionality of WordPress
• Composing and previewing pages
• Including images and multimedia files in posts
• Moderating comments and pingbacks
• Adding and managing user accounts
• Customizing with widgets

I want to add here that this material is also great basic instruction for self-hosted WordPress 2.7 users interested in learning the basics of blogging with WordPress. This course could be considered a “prerequisite” for my Self-Hosting a WordPress Site course, also on Lynda.com.

Lynda.comRemember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

New on Lynda.com: Self-Hosting a WordPress Site

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New training videos for self-hosted WordPress users.

I’m extremely pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: Self-Hosting a WordPress Site.

From the official course description:

In Self-Hosting a WordPress Site, author and avid blogger Maria Langer shows how a blog can be customized to make it stand out in the digital crowd. Maria walks WordPress users—from casual bloggers to seasoned pros—through the steps to making a blog truly unique. This course goes beyond the basics, like setting a standard theme, and demonstrates such advanced techniques as incorporating CSS, PHP, and HTML.

Topics Include:
• Installing WordPress on any ISP
• Touring a WordPress CMS site
• Understanding all the content creation options
• Creating a customized look with PHP and CSS changes
• Using plug-ins to add features
• Setting options for user accounts

Lynda.comRemember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

Turning Off a Plugin’s Update Reminder

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Hacking it might be better than ignoring it.

Plugin Needs UpdatingOne of the cool features of the Dashboard and administration panels in the current version of WordPress is its reminders of comments awaiting modification and plugins requiring update. You’ll see the reminders as numbers inside red circles. The one shown here, for example, is telling me that one of my installed plugins has an update available.

Clicking the Plugins button on the administration panel’s navigation bar displays the details. In this case, it’s a list of plugins, with a yellow bar indicating the available update:
Update Available

If you’ve been following the posts about WordPress on this site, you might recall that I had a problem with this particular plugin, Landing Sites. In fact, I’d already updated it on my blog and discovered that the update didn’t work. So I’d reinstalled the older version. As a result, WordPress is no nagging me to update to a version I don’t want to use.

A stronger person would simply ignore the update flag. But why do that if you can turn the flag off for this plugin?

Here’s the trick.

  1. Use WordPress’s built-in plugin editor to open the plugin file you don’t want to update for the current version.
  2. Locate the line near the beginning that begins with the word Version: and includes the current version number. Here’s what it looks like for the plugin I’m hacking:
    Edit Plugin
  3. Replace the version number with the current version number. So, in this example, I’d replace 1.3 with 1.4.1.
  4. You can then get a bit fancy and modify the Description area to note the real version number, just in case you forget. This information will appear on the Manage Plugins administration panel as a reminder. Here’s what my fully edited Description and Version look like:
    Edit Plugin
  5. Click the Update File button to save your changes.

Manage PluginsIf you did all of this right and didn’t edit something you shouldn’t have, WordPress will think you have the current version of the plugin installed and the reminder icon will go away. As shown here, the version number and description in the Manage Plugins administration panel will reflect your changes.

Best of all, if another update comes out, WordPress will still notify you about it.

Blogging Basics: Comment Spam, Part II

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Part II: When Comments Go Wrong

In the first part of this series, I explained what comments and pingbacks are and how they can benefit your blog. If you don’t know this stuff, go back and read that first. In this part of the series, I’ll explain how and why the comments feature can go wrong and list three tools for WordPress that can fight it.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

While your blog’s readers like the comments feature because it enables them to participate in your blog, spammers like it, too. It gives them the ability to share their spammy comments and links on your blog.

Comment Spam ExampleComment spam is a terrible problem for bloggers. If left uncontrolled, it can quickly take over your blog by filling post comments with a lot of garbage — some of of obscene — including links to Web sites you probably don’t want to advertise for. Your blog visitors will have to wade through all this junk to find real comments. If the problem is bad enough, the probably won’t bother looking. If the comment spam is offensive enough, they might not visit your blog again.

Pingback SpamComment spam’s close cousin is pingback spam, which is relatively new to blogging. In pingback spam, someone else’s blog links back to yours, placing a pingback link to that blog in your blog. The purpose may be to get your site visitors to come to that blog, or, if you have nofollow disabled, to improve the site’s Google page rank.

Both comment spam and pingback spam can be automatically generated. For comment spam, spambot programs can automatically find comment forms on a blog, fill in the fields, and submit the spam comments. Pingback spam can be created through the use of feed “scraping” tools that pull parts of posts from your blog and posts them to the spammer’s blog, along with a link to yours. Because of automation, so there’s no limit to how much spam can be sent to your blog.

Spam Stopping Tools

Fortunately, there’s help. Many WordPress programmers are out there, fighting the same war against spam that you are. They have the skills to write plugins that can identify spam and quarantine or delete it so it doesn’t appear on your blog.

While there are numerous spam prevention tools out there for WordPress users, I have personal experience with three of them:

  • Aksimet, which is part of WordPress.com and comes as a plugin with self-hosted WordPress blogs, is created and maintained by the folks at Automattic, makers of WordPress. It’s fully integrated into WordPress and is extremely effective. I tell you more about how to set up and use Akismet in Part IV of this series.

    • Spam Karma, by Dr. Dave, is another powerful spam prevention tool. I used this exclusively for a while and it caught all the spam that appeared on my site. The only reason I stopped using it is because I switched to Akismet.

  • Bad Behavior is a plugin by Michael Hampton. It attempts to head off spam by determining whether a hit to a blog post is by a human or a spambot. Spambots are automatically denied access. One side benefit of this approach is a reduction in MySQL activity due to spambot access — that’s why I initially began using it. I used Bad Behavior in conjunction with one of the other spam prevention tools listed here for some time before trusting Akismet to do the whole job. The reason: Bad Behavior sometimes records false positives, making it impossible for certain real people to post comments. This problem occurs rarely, but since Akismet seems to be doing the job on its own, I prefer not to take the chance. (Note to Michael if you stop by to read this: if I got this wrong, please do comment to set me straight.)

I should note here that both Akismet and Spam Karma can “learn” about spam based on how you resolve comments you manually moderate. That’s why it’s important to properly identify any false positives or missed spam.

In the next post of this series, I’ll explain how you can identify comment spam — even when it doesn’t look like spam.

Learn More

Get more from your software.

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

Why WordPress Plugin Updates Aren’t Always a Good Thing

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When updates go wrong.

Way back in 2006, I wrote an article titled “Reader Engagement Site Improvements.” In it, I detailed a number of plugins I’d installed to help keep visitors around a while longer, looking at new content on my site.

Landing Sites in ActionOne of these plugins is called Landing Sites. Its job is to check to see if a visitor has arrived (or “landed”) on your blog from a search engine it knows. If it has, it displays a custom message with links to possibly related posts. The idea is that if a visitor has come to your site because he was searching for something, maybe one of your other related posts might meet his needs. Here’s what it looks like on my blog, with some customization.

I used the plugin on both my main blog, An Eclectic Mind, and this Maria’s Guides site. It worked like a charm. My blog was even commended by another blogger for the use of this feature. (Wish I could find the link, but I can’t. Sorry.)

Then, I made a fatal error. When WordPress notified me that the Landing Sites plugin had been updated from version 1.3 to 1.4.1, I allowed it to automatically install the update. I didn’t realize until I updated my blog to WordPress 2.7 and changed the theme that Landing Sites had stopped working. Instead of showing a list of related posts, it was show some raw and ugly PHP code.

I figured the problem was with WordPress 2.7, so I just disabled it on my blog. I posted a comment in a WordPress.org support thread and waited for a response. The author of the plugin subsequently posted instructions for a fix, but it didn’t work for me or for others.

Today, Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress fame) e-mailed me to point out that the plugin wasn’t working on this site. (I admit it: I’m lazy and still have this site set up on WordPress 2.6.5.) That surprised me. I went into action, beginning the troubleshooting process.

No fix worked. But I was able to track down the old version of the plugin. I disabled the current version and deleted it. Then I reinstalled the old version (1.3) and activated it. The result: problem solved.

I then went to my blog, which is running WordPress 2.7, and installed the old version there. As you can see from the screenshot above, it works.

What does this mean to self-hosted WordPress users? Unfortunately, it means that plugin updates don’t always make things work better — or even right. In this instance, the plugin author “broke” the plugin by trying to fix it and releasing an update. I don’t know if the new version works for everyone else, but I know it doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m just glad that reinstalling the old version fixed the problem.

I like the plugin and am glad to have it fully functional on my blogs.

A big thanks to Lorelle for contacting me when she found the problem. Since I never reach my blogs via a search engine, I probably never would have found the problem on my own.

Blogging Basics: Comment Spam, Part I

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Part I: Understanding Comments and Pingpacks

One of the main things that differentiate a blog from a Web site is the ability of readers to interact with what you post. This is done primarily through the use of comments.

Comment Basics

Most blogging software supports reader commenting. Typically, a comment form appears at the bottom of a post. Readers can enter their comments about the post, along with their name, e-mail address, and Web or blog URL. When the form is submitted, the comment is added to the post.

Post with CommentsThe screenshot here shows what a post on my blog, An Eclectic Mind, looks like with a few comments added, as well as a comment form.

Most blogging software packages offer the blogger options for handling comments. WordPress, for example offers several options:

  • Comments can be enabled or disabled by default or set on a post-by-post basis.
  • Commenter e-mail address can be required for a comment to be submitted.
  • Blog registration can be required for a comment to be submitted.
  • Comments can be held for moderation or automatically moderated based on a handful of options, including moderation and blacklist words or phrases.

Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Pingbacks (or trackbacks) are part of the commenting arena. A pingback happens when another blogger writes a post in which he links directly back to your post. He may have quoted your post in his and is linking back to the source. Or maybe he just wants to tell his readers how good your post was and send them over to your blog to read it. If his blogging software supports pingbacks or he has manually entered the link as a trackback, a special comment is sent to your blog with a link back to his blog.

Technically, a trackback is different from a pingback. A pingback is automated. The other blogger’s blogging platform must be capable of creating the pingback comment. Before automated pingbacks were widely supported, blogging platforms included a trackback feature that required the blogger to manually enter a linked post’s URL in a field when creating his post. Nowadays, these two terms are often used interchangeably.

In WordPress, you must have pingbacks enabled for your blog posts in order for WordPress to receive them. Pingbacks can appear with comments or, if the blog’s theme separates comments from pingbacks, they can appear separately. For example, my blog’s theme separates comments and pingbacks under different “tabs.”

Pingbacks look different, too. Instead of including a blogger’s name and comment, they include the name of the post that links to your post and a short excerpt surrounded by [...] characters. Here’s what a pingback looks like on a post in this blog:

Pingback Example

Comments, Pingbacks, and Reader Participation

It’s pretty easy to see how comments encourage reader participation. Comments give readers an opportunity to add or respond to your post. If enough readers comment and you respond, a conversation gets started. Sometimes that conversation can have more value than your original post.

For example, one of the most popular posts on this site is about a change in iTunes that affected how podcasts play back on an iPod. I identified the problem and created a workaround. A bunch of readers commented. One of the readers commented by sharing an AppleScript he’d written to automate my workaround. Another reader fine-tuned that script so it ran more efficiently. To this day, I use that script as my workaround. You can see the post and read the comments here.

Pingbacks also encourage reader participation, but in a less direct way. Suppose you read this post and think that your readers might benefit from it. You write a post on your blog that refers to it and adds your own comments. When you link to this post from your blog, a link to your post appears on this post. So readers reading comments here can go to your post to see what you’ve written about this topic.

Unfortunately, not everyone uses comments and pingbacks as they’re intended. The result is comment and pingback spam. I’ll discuss those in the next post of this series.

Lynda.comLearn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

Related Posts:

The following posts on this site are related. This list is not machine-generated.

Get the Right Copyright Dates in Your Blog Footer

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A tip for self-hosted WordPress users.

Contrary to popular belief, most blogs are copyrighted. As a result, most blog themes include a copyright notice in the footer.

How the copyright notice is entered into the theme determines how it appears:

  • If entered as plain text, it appears as a static date or range of dates — whatever you entered. This means that each new year — right about now — you need to change the static text to include the current year.
  • If entered using tags that pull the most recent date’s year from your WordPress blog — or just use the current year — a range of dates may not appear at all. Instead, there will be just one date. That’s better, but not exactly accurate.
  • If entered using PHP tags that get the first and last years of blog posts and put them in a range — you never have to modify the footer to change the dates and they always include the entire range of post years. This is the best solution and it isn’t difficult to do.

To automatically display a range of dates from the year of your first post to your most recent post in a copyright notice, just edit the code in the footer to remove your current copyright notice code and replace it with this:


<?php
     global $wpdb;
     $post_datetimes = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT YEAR(post_date_gmt) AS year FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date_gmt > 1970 ORDER BY post_date_gmt ASC");
     $firstpost_year = $post_datetimes[0]->year;
     $lastpost_year = $post_datetimes[count($post_datetimes)-1]->year;

     $copyright = __('Copyright &copy; ') . $firstpost_year;
     if($firstpost_year != $lastpost_year) {
          $copyright .= '-'. $lastpost_year;
     }

     echo $copyright;
?>
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>

The result, on this blog, would be something like:

Copyright © 2004-2009 Maria's Guides

If you prefer to have your name appear instead of the name of your blog, replace the last line with your name. That’s what I do.

Lynda.comLearn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

How To Customize WordPress’s Tag Cloud Widget

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You don’t have to use it with default settings.

If you use WordPress widgets on your self-hosted WordPress blog, you may not be fully satisfied with the way the Tag Cloud widget looks and works on your site. I know I wasn’t. The maximum font size was too large for the most commonly used tag (helicopters, on my blog) to fit into the column in which I’d put it. Since I wanted my tag cloud in the narrow column in which it resided, I had to make a change.

The answer is to modify the wp_tag_cloud function in the category-template.php file. It’s remarkably easy to do. Here’s how.

  1. Open the file /wp-includes/category-template.php.
  2. Scroll down to the line that begins function wp_tag_cloud. If you’re using WordPress 2.7 and haven’t made any other changes to this file, you should find it at line 552. (You can always do a search for it; I found the general area by searching for “tag cloud.”)
  3. Make changes in the array as follows:

    Tag Cloud Function

    • To specify the smallest font size, set the value after ‘smallest’. The default is 8 points.
    • To specify the largest font size, set the value after ‘largest’. The default size is 22 points.
    • To specify the maximum number of tags included in the cloud, set the value after ‘number’. The default number of tags is 45.

    My Tag CloudI changed my settings to 6, 16, and 75 respectively. You can see the results in the screenshot here, as well as in the sidebar for my blog, An Eclectic Mind.

  4. Overwrite the existing file with the changed file.

When you reload a page that uses the Tag Cloud widget, your changes should appear immediately.

Keep in mind that if WordPress is updated and the file you changed is replaced, you may have to repeat these steps to reset your defaults.

Learn More

Lynda.comLearn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.