Tag Archives | comments

P2: Faster Blogging WordPress Theme

Dec/13 in Web Development Tutorials

P2 WordPress Theme

Want to develop a website that is more about the comments than it is about the stories?  With WordPress and the P2 theme you can do that.  This innovative theme for WordPress gives you inline comments on the homepage, a posting form right on the main index, inline editing of posts and more.
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Have WordPress Guides, Will Travel

May/14 in Web Development Tutorials

WordPress Help, Tips and Tutorials

Need a handy guide to WordPress?  Try out some of these great links!

Let me know which ones are your favorites, and what type of WordPress lists, tutorials or more you would like to see in the future!

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A Not So Flattering Review of DISQUS

Jul/15 in Online Apps, Web Development Tutorials

DISQUS Comment System Review

As you might of (or might not have, depending on how often you visit) noticed, I had DISQUS powering the comments on Mitchelaneous, the Web Hosting Show and Firefox Facts.  However, “had” is the important word.  This morning I removed DISQUS across the board.

Now I’ll cut to the chase, and tell you why.  It seems that no matter how I tweaked around with WordPress, I could never get DISQUS to pick up on all my trackbacks and comments.  One or two a day would get stuck going to the internal WordPress comment engine (which is practically blocked from you after you install DISQUS).

Having grown tired of checking two places for spam and comments, I decided things were simpler before DISQUS was brought into the picture.  It might be an alright comment system for some, but for me – it was just a little more trouble than it was worth.  Just my two cents here, so if you have an opinion that is either positive or negative about DISQUS post it in the comments.

Update: I have recently had a change of heart, and have decided Disqus is doing a much better job now, than ever before.  Before you make up your mind, be sure to check out my re-review and troubleshooting tips of Disqus.

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Playing with IntenseDebate

Nov/17 in Web Development Tutorials

intensedebate-logo I installed IntenseDebate on FirefoxFacts.com a few days ago, and thus far – I like it.  There are a few bugs and annoyances, but overall the product is really cool.  The idea here is to add tons of new features to your standard commenting system. 

Some of the cool features that IntenseDebate brings includes:

  • Comment Threading – this allows you to add a comment to the general discussion, or just reply to one comment that needs a reply.
  • Reply by E-mail – the reply by e-mail feature makes it super-easy to stay in the conversation.  You can respond to and moderate your comments with the ease of just replying to an e-mail.
  • Importing and Exporting – the best feature of all, the import and export feature is nice.  It gives you a “way out” just in case IntenseDebate doesn’t tickle your fancy.

You can read about the other features, such as reputation points and commenter profiles here.   There is also a ‘bit of a social network thrown into the mix too – which is a nice touch.  You get your own profile page, where people can find where you have commented and who you are following. Here is my profile as an example:  http://www.intensedebate.com/people/cheasym

Sign up is easy (especially if you have an Open ID) and they walk you through the steps of adding it you your blogging engine of choice.

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Akismet Help and How-tos

Sep/10 in Web Development Tutorials

raid19b Out of all the years I have been using WordPress, I have probably not used one plugin more often than I have used Askimet.  Now that might be because it rocks, or because it came with WordPress, so it was kind of always “there”.  Love it or hate it, it does get the job done when it comes to filtering out spam comments from your WordPress blog.

The way it works is it checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, then you can review if necessary. 

Akismet Says I Need an API Key.  Where Do I Get That?

WordPress.com has what’s called “API keys” which allow you to use services and enhancements built on the WordPress.com platform. This allows you to leverage the power of WP.com while still hosting your blog elsewhere.

All you have to do is sign up for a WordPress.com account, and you will get your API key to add to your Akismet settings so it will work.

I Deleted Akismet Before I Knew How Awesome it Was.  How Can I Get it Back?

You can download the spam comment fighting plugin here:

http://akismet.com/download/

How Can I Show a Badge of How Many Spam Comments I Have Filtered Out?

If you want to put the Akismet fear of God into any spam commenters looking at your site as a target, just cut and paste this tag into your template:

<?php akismet_counter(); ?>

That will display how many spam comments Akismet has caught for you.

I Am Getting a Akismet 2.1 Parse Error.  How Can I Fix It?

You can find a fix here or better yet, upgrade Akismet to the latest version, which fixes this bug that was in the Akismet 2.1 release.

Where Can I Find More Help for Akismet?

Try searching the WordPress.org forums.  Using the “akismet” tag, you are bound to turn up a lot of results to browse through too:

http://wordpress.org/tags/akismet

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Where Are You in the Green Hosting Debate?

May/08 in Web Hosting

green-hosting-debate I’ve got a lot of positive and negative feedback on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show podcast.  The most interesting of the bunch is the debate over how usual “green” hosting really is.  I know some hosts out there really want to do better by the environment, and feel like this is helping.  After reviewing all the facts though I still feel like it is a three card monte-like scam.  Here is a view from the other side of the fence from Jen L, one of the debaters…

We do it, and if it’s a scam, then so is my electric company regulated and overseen by the government.

At my home, I have the option to pay a premium for renewable energy, and I have lots of official stuff on my bill showing the higher price I pay with the guarantees that money got fed into the grid. My electric company releases the energy I pay for into the grid – they have to, or its illegal. Are the zaps coming into my house guaranteed to be clean?

No. Energy delivery is communal – but the higher premium I pay puts more clean energy into the grid that would not otherwise get there. If enough people chose to pay for the higher premium, a higher percentage of energy in the grid would be renewable. Does it come with the same ego boost as solar panels on the top of my house? No. Does it ensure that less pollution comes from me because I pay more than everyone else? Yes. It makes a difference.

It’s the same concept. Green Tags enable people that want to buy renewable energy but who don’t have it directly available to them to do so. If *everyone* did it no matter where they were, we could all be green in a short amount of time.

If you wonder if its a scam, ask to see the certificates that were issued (as we all get certificates saying precisely what we bought), and the report as to how they arrived at how much to offset. If they can’t give it to you, then yes, possibly, it’s a scam.

If they *can*, the place you are hosting is paying for their energy *twice*, once to keep the power on, and again in the same amount to feed that energy they used back into the grid as green energy so someone else doesn’t have to use dirty energy.

How someone voluntarily choosing to pay for their electricity twice can be considered “a scam” is beyond me.

Check out podcast 151 for yourself and join the debate.  Is green hosting good or just another sales gimmick to get you in the door?

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Comment Timeout – Spam Fighter

Apr/27 in Web Development Tutorials

Comment SpamI’ve been looking for a good WordPress comment to help me fight the comment and trackback spam I have been getting lately. One solution was to turn off commenting for posts that were so many days old. I like this idea – because I highly doubt somebody today is going to feel motivated to comment on something I posted two or three years ago.

With that said, I found the tool I was looking for in Comment Timeout. This wonderful plugin allows you to:

  • It lets you close comments on old entries that do not have an ongoing, active discussion.
  • It examines your spam queue and your Bad Behavior logs to let you close comments and trackbacks across the board to troublesome IP addresses.
  • It allows you to reject comments that contain too many hyperlinks, or links in BBCode format.

I have used this on the Web Hosting Show’s Web site for a few days now and have been enjoying the result. As soon as I get the time to do so, I’ll be rolling this out on all of my Web sites.

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Send in Your Web Hosting Questions

Mar/08 in Personal, Web Hosting

I gave this a shot once and it didn’t work out – but I figured hey, why not give it one more try? I would like to get anybody and everybody to send me your hosting questions in audio form via Odeo. Here is the link for you to do so.

Send Me A Message

Now what can your question cover? Anything! Here are a few topic ideas to get you started:

1. Send me just a friendly hello!
2. Ask me a question about your hosting account of the Web hosting business.
3. Let me know your questions on and about domain names.

Both Web hosts and Web hosting clients are welcome to ask and I promise you I will do my best to get it played on a future episode of the Web Hosting Show. If I can answer it, then I will hook you up with somebody who can via the comments.

Send me your thoughts, my ears and podcast is waiting for you! Also if you know of a service other than Odeo which you would like to use just let me know.

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More WHIR Blog Feedback

Oct/26 in Web Hosting

Now it looks like I might have rubbed a few people at the WHIR the wrong way with my commentary on how the only folks that are commenting on WHIR blogs are the other WHIR writers. It’s funny this catches their attention and me mentioning that WHIR TV would be a lot better with Anastasia Tubanos in a bikini doesn’t. For the post that started all of this – click here.

Let me comment on something Liam Eagle said though:

Mitch seems to think he’s unraveling some sort of conspiracy. But this is hardly a revelation. It ought to be patently obvious to anyone reading the WHIR blogs that we’re posting comments on each other’s entries. We’re certainly not doing it in secret.

Nobody said it was a secret.

The reason I thought it was funny is that the Web Host Industry Review is one of the biggest dogs in the fight. They are the “leaders of the pack” in some people’s eyes. When you look at other Web hosting leaders blog (take Bob Parsons for example) he gets comments all over the place. Why isn’t the WHIR Blog team getting the same reaction? That is what I thought was “odd” and then “funny”.

Just to make it clear yet again, just because I might question or highlight what the WHIR is doing doesn’t mean there is a “negative meaning” behind it. Heck, I even wrote for the WHIR once upon a time (did one article too my whole month there :) ).

One thing that the WHIR does very well is Web hosting news. I am in no way, shape or form in competition with the WHIR team. They have a bigger budget, a bigger team, and more leverage in the business than a little old Web hosting podcaster like me has. I am only trying to bring attention to what I see.

Now one more comment on what Liam had to say in his own comment:

Hey Mitch. I was going to reply here, but I thought maybe nobody would see it, so I put something up on my blog. :)

Yes Liam, maybe nobody would have seen it here, but then again – where did WHIR TV go anyways?

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