Tag Archives: Akismet

Magic Moments: Restricted use of HTML

Posted on Wednesday 30 May 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

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One of the differences between WordPress.com and .org is what you can or can’t do with HTML and widgets.

refers to .com blog

Widgets are small pieces of programming or applications that are designed to be placed in the sidebars. WordPress.com provides a very good selection for you to use, all perfectly satisfactory for creating a basic blog. But these do have some restrictions for what you can do with them, and placing HTML that hasn’t been approved by WordPress in the text widgets is one of them.

This has caused many disgruntled bloggers to come to me to say “it’s not working properly!” They see the wonderful results of HTML that does work on WordPress.org blogs, and when they try to produce the same results they are bitterly disappointed.

You can’t expect all the singing-and-dancing benefits from WordPress.org on your .com blog if you are not playing for it. Be grateful that you get Akismet for free, and accept that the Twitter Badges’ code cannot be placed into the text widgets and allowed to work, likewise with videos and podcasts placed inside posts (this facility has been withdrawn as a result of the most recent WordPress.com redesign).

But certain widgets have been created as compensation. It used to be almost impossible to place an image within a text widget, because it required simple HTML. Now there is an Image widget that allows you to upload the URL of a previously uploaded image from the media gallery, and everything is done for you, including title, alt tags, caption, alignment, dimensions and a link to elsewhere, all perfect for enhancing your SEO.

There is a Facebook Like Box widget that connects with your Facebook Page and a link to the page and how many have ‘liked’ it. You have the choice of showing some examples of your fans’ avatars, your profile stream or your Page’s wall activity.

The Follow Blog widget allows your readers to subscribe to your latest posts, instead of having to create a Feedburner RSS feed and placing the code in a text widget (although this HTML is generally allowed). You can change the wording and call to action within the sign up box without having to worry about HTML.

And even if you can’t place a Twitter Badge on your WordPress.com blog, the Twitter widget that displays your latest tweets is a very good substitute, accompanied by a good choice of beneficial add-ons.

I’m amazed at what you can do to optimise your WordPress.com blog. But – if you still hanker after all the other gimzos that you see on other blogs, then you will have to take the leap and transfer your posts and pages onto a WordPress.org blog, and then the world will be your oyster!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon

Magic Moment: Updating plugins

Posted on Friday 27 April 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

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WordPress is very good at reminding you whenever any of your plugins are ready for upgrading.

It is very easy to do this, especially if you have set up your WordPress blogsite using the application Fantastico. This will enable you to instantly upgrade anything on your website with just one click, without having to use any FTP usernames and passwords.

4 plugins need updatingHow many plugin upgrades that are needed are shown on your left sidebar when you’re inside WordPress.

(Plugins are applications that are only available for WordPress.org blogs that help improve your blogsite’s performance and allow it to accomplish certain things. These are generally free, and very easy to install.)

As you can see, I have four plugins that require updating.

If you click on the Plugins link it will take you to the plugins page which lists all the plugins you have installed:

Plugin page listings

As you can see, my Akismet plugin requires updating. If your host uses Fantastico, all you need is to click on the ‘update automatically’ link and it will automatically update it for you:

Plugin automatically updated

Once the ‘Plugin reactivated successfully’ sentence has appeared, click on the ‘Return to Plugins Page’ link:

Plugin reinstalled

There you are, the plugin has been successfully updated, and the tally on your sidebar will have been reduced by one:

Only three plugins to updateNow search for the next plugin on the list that requires updating, and do the same procedure again.

It’s always a good idea to keep your plugins up to date, so you can take advantage of any new procedures the authors have created and your blogsite’s performance will be enhanced.

Happy blogging!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, non-jargon, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Why you should activate Akismet

Posted on Tuesday 10 April 2012 by Alice • 4 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

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The beauty of WordPress.com is that most of the technical stuff is already done for you. This is an absolute dream, as this means you can set up a blog in next to no time, and have everything working perfectly for you from the beginning without you having to worry about activating anything.

One of the most beneficial things WordPress does for its .com customers is to automatically set up Akismet as standard, without you having to pay for it. It used to be free for all WordPress users, but now WordPress.org blogs need to pay for an Akismet key to activate it. So what is Akismet?

I like to think of Akismet as a spam-eater. The internet is plagued with spam, and many clever people are continuously employed trying to combat it. Spam is almost like an ever-evolving animal, so it is a never-ending battle trying to keep on top of it, and sometimes it can actually take over your blog and your life.

Let me show you part of my Dashboard from this morning:

As this is a WordPress.org blog, I have already activated the Akismet plugin WordPress kindly supplied me when I downloaded it. Here you can see it has ‘eaten’ 159 spam since yesterday, not to mention all the spam I’ve ever received since setting up this blog. Without Akismet this spam would have appeared as comments, and would have clogged up my email inbox as well. Considering that some of this will not be particularly salubrious, I am glad Akismet has done its work.

And of course, it’s easy to get rid of spam, just click on the word ‘spam’ to view the list:

Don’t bother reading them. Akismet will have checked them for relevant content and if any of them are true comments, they would have been placed in the Comments section ready for your approval, and hopefully your reply.

Some spam will appear to be complimentary – this is to get you to approve them. Whenever you do approve a comment, it’s always wise to check the weblink it is associated with to make sure it hasn’t slipped through Akismet’s net, or you will be giving SEO credit to a website you would not like to recommend.

I had a friend who didn’t activate his Akismet on his blog, and started receiving 1,000 comments a day. Of course they were all spam, which he didn’t realise, and he approved the ‘nice’ ones thinking he was collecting a good following. What he was doing was sending a message to these spammers to send him more, which of course he got in spades. After I had shown him what a true comment was like, with the differences to a complimentary spam, he was at first devastated, and then resolute to activate his Akismet as soon as he could.

The image above shows a red ring about the button ‘Empty Spam’, which I suggest you use regularly! Not only will this give a short-lived sense of annihilation, it may trigger a message to spammers that they are not tolerated, and there are devices at hand to destroy them.

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Worried about blogging? Start slowly with WordPress.com

Posted on Tuesday 1 March 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

I regularly read blogs that praise WordPress and say what a fantastic blogging platform it is. But generally it is WordPress.org they are talking about, the sophisticated version that is independently hosted, and can perform in total synchrony with your website, or even become your whole website!

refers to .com blog

Unfortunately you need to pay to host it, it needs someone who understands how to build it and it can take a long time to set up. Even so, once completed, the results are totally professional, it collaborates extremely successfully with search engines, and is very much worthwhile the expenditure.

But this doesn’t help the blogging sceptics. There are plenty out there that are uncomfortable about starting a blog, are not sure of the expense, their business may have only have a budget, or they would like to find out more about WordPress before making a commitment.

Enter WordPress.com, the ‘free’ version hosted by WordPress that can be set up in minutes. Its minimal expenses are to activate Akismet, the ‘spam eater’, and if you want to convert the URL WordPress gives you to one of your own.

Here is a blogging platform ideally suited to enable you to ‘practice’ blogging before embarking into this social networking world. By creating a WordPress.com blog you will be able to learn how to fully use the platform, discover all the tricks there are available, excel in the intricacies of blogging and enjoy producing a fully-operational blog with the minimum of fuss.

OK, there are some restrictions: you can’t advertise or sell from a WordPress.com blog, as the blog police will close you down. Only certain forms of HTML code are accepted (RSS, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc) so it is not a medium to make money. This kind of blog should be used only to education, entertain and publicise your business.

But if you want to create a blog to practice blogging or somewhere to dip your toe into the blogging world before expanding into more elaborate and profitable realms, then WordPress.com is the answer.

And remember, if you want to eventually create a WordPress.org blog in the future, it is extremely easy to transfer the contents of your WordPress.com blog over to it without losing a thing! After all, they are run by the same people!

If you want to know how to set up a WordPress.com blog, my visual e-courses are available free on this website. Just click here to make a blog or explore the links on my sidebar.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility

Which comments should you approve?

Posted on Tuesday 4 January 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

When your blog is new, there is nothing more exciting than getting a comment! It not only proves that people are reading your posts, but that they like them enough to want to respond.

Of course the more you write, the kind of relevant post subjects you offer, and the more people who read your blog, the more likely you will get comments. The audience ratio will vary depending on where your blog is geographically – obviously American blogs get more comments because there is a culture to perform online interaction and activity.

But should you approve all your comments? Obviously special applications like Akismet (which I call my trusty spam-eater) will seek out and separate spam comments, either by dumping them in the spam folder, or offering them for moderation (administrator’s approval). Some it will ferret away without you having to consider them.

Spam (or as it should be better known as inappropriate viral marketing) is recognised as either a comment that has nothing to do with your post’s subject, or is an annoying comment like ‘Nice post’. Be aware of the ones that seem to be complimentary, they may contain links to their own websites or blogs that you may not approve of. A lot of spam, either human or robot generated, is about link building and getting more traffic to their sites. Read each carefully before approving them, to make sure they are suitable.

If you want to know whether to accept the comment, check out the destination of the commenter’s website or blog. Every comment will contain a link to the commentator’s email address and their website or blog, and you should check them (Akismet will weed out the offensive ones) before deciding to publish their comment. Once the comment is live, the link to their website is live also, helping them with SEO and inbound links to boost their ratings.

So once you’ve approved and published the comments, why not respond to them yourself? This is a good way to keep the conversation going (especially if they reply back) and this continuous repartee will encourage the internet spiders to return because they consider it to be new material.  I once had a very nice conversation with a young blogger about a particular subject, an activity I very much enjoyed.

Should you approve comments that disagree with your post? Yes, everyone is entitled to have their say, and as long as the comment is not derogatory to you or your blog, then go ahead and publish it. If you want to set the matter straight, a polite answer is a good idea, as long as you don’t continue the slagging match!

And responding to other people’s blogs will also raise your expert status within your subject (particularly if you respond to like-minded blogs to yours), as well as providing a link back to your blog if your comment is approved.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, Writing tips