Comments are an important part of blogs. They help readers relate to articles by asking questions and building discussion and are even credited with creating some of the strongest online communities today. But, how do you keep everything clean and on topic? Do your users know what to expect? I’m not just talking about common sense and anti-spam practices, I’m talking about a policy or a code of conduct. Do you have one?
We have a comment policy here, and it’s as follows:
Comments will be accepted if they meet the following conditions:
The comment is not spam.
The comment is not left solely to drive traffic elsewhere. (Yes, this is spam.)
The comment is not widely off topic.
The comment is not obscene or profane.
The commenter has left a real name or proper screen name. (“Cheap Lawn Chairs” and “Joe @ MyCellPhoneTips.blah” are not real names).
We do use a broad list of moderation keywords, but […]
Original post by James
Technorati Tags: blog
If you use the Comment Rating plugin for your WordPress powered site, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the latest version as it fixes a security vulnerability. More specifically, a Cross-site Request Forgery attack. According to the report at OSVDB.org which is an Open Source Vulnerability Database:
The flaw exists because the application does not require multiple steps or explicit confirmation for unspecified sensitive transactions for the admin function. By using a crafted URL (e.g., a crafted GET request inside an “img” tag), an attacker may trick the victim into clicking on the image to take advantage of the trust relationship between the authenticated victim and the application. Such an attack could trick the victim into executing arbitrary commands in the context of their session with the application, without further prompting or verification.
There is no known workaround for versions lower than 2.9.21. Kudos goes to KrebsOnSecurity for reporting the flaw […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Comments are the lifeblood of any website. It keeps pumping some interesting views and discussions into a post. However, I have seen several blogs which close comments for posts which are older than say a month or two.
The major concern which plays a factor in closing down comments is spam, since many users believe that spammers usually target. However, the spam plugins available today are very effective at curbing spam if not entirely stopping them. If you are interested in know about those plugins, you can visit an earlier post from me about Spam and Security plugins for WordPress.
However, getting back to the point. I do close comments on certain blog posts like contests and posts which are totally out-dated, but using a mass closure on comments results in several problems, which include:
For example, say when I write about products, more often than not I have seen authors of […]
Original post by Keith Dsouza
Technorati Tags: blog
Spam in any form is annoying at its best. As a internet user, every one of us has to deal with spam. It may be in the form of emails, instant messages or comments.
As a avid always-on internet user, I deal with tons of spam everyday. However, in the time (more than 11 years) I have spent on the internet, I can tell you one thing: No spam protection is perfect, it just works 98% of times. There is always a 2% chance that it will flag legitimate messages as spam or spam messages as legitimate.
Also Read: Setting up Akismet on your WordPress blog
Relying on spam engines is not always 100% accurate. To overcome the issue of the “legitimate messages marked as spam” (some of which may be really important) I follow a certain rule. This applies to spam comments marked on my WordPress blog as well, which is […]
Original post by Keith Dsouza
Technorati Tags: blog
Next up on the “Five” series is a sampling of 5 comment related plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory. There are 395 plugins as of today that are tagged with the term comment to choose from.
Comments are the lifeblood of any website. That is where the true interaction happens not only between the creator of the website and visitors but also between the visitors themselves of a website.
So I dug through the WordPress plugin directory and came up with what I believe are five plugins to help increase the interaction on your website:
SI CAPTCHA for WordPress: This plugin gives you an anti-spam measure on your comment form to help reduce the number of SPAM comments your website receives. Now don’t get me wrong – ASKIMET does a terrific job of stopping SPAM comments (according to their website 82% of all comments are SPAM). Well this plugin requires human intervention […]
Original post by WindowsObserver
Technorati Tags: blog
Let me start off by saying that this post will not talk about how to get sponsors, how to determine prizes, or how to determine rules for a blog contest. This post will talk about how to tweak your WordPress blog to solve the biggest problem in running a blog contest to gain RSS subscribers.
Problem
The issue here is that there is no easy way to track if each contestant has actually subscribed to your RSS feed. Without the ability to confirm RSS subscription, anybody can just claim that they have subscribed to your feed and get a free entry into the contest.
Solution
A known solution to this problem is to include a special contest code into your RSS feed and not have this code visible on your website. That way each contestant will be forced to grab the code from your feed and submit the code via comments […]
Original post by Thaya
Technorati Tags: blog, rss, feed
The man, the myth, the legend, Ajay D’Souza not only brings you news of the latest WordPress plugins and themes to hit the community but he also has a few plugins under his belt. Today, I’ll be reviewing one of those plugins called Autoclose.
Autoclose enables a granular approach to managing pingbacks/comments/trackbacks on both posts and pages. Some of the highlights that the plugin features:
Close Comments on posts/pages older than (number of days).
Close Pingbacks/Trackbacks on posts?
Close Pingbacks/Trackbacks on pages?
Close Pingbacks/Trackbacks on posts/pages older than (number of days).
The ability to configure when the plugin runs its configuration to detect if a comment/trackback/pingback need to be closed off.
Last but not least, Autoclose also provides a checkbox to delete post revisions.
So why would you want to use a plugin like this? For starters, based on my experience with blogging, the conversation on any particular blog post usually only lasts 24-72 […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, news
Searching through my feeds today, I came across a very cool plugin/application combo. It’s called Moderator and was written by Daniel Dura. Moderator is a combination of a WordPress plugin and an Adobe Air Application. With the Adobe AIR app, you can:
Viewing unmoderated comments.
Dock and system tray notifications of the number of unmoderated comments.
Accept, delete, and spam comments from within the desktop client.
Close application window, or minimize it to the system tray while running.
Shows the Gravatar icons for the user who posted the comment.
After installing and then activating the plugin, I installed the application. Installation went smoothly and now I have access to my comment moderation queue right from my desktop. An additional touch is that, my Windows taskbar now has an icon that mimics the comment moderation bubble graphic with a number that represents the amount of comments in the moderation queue. Pretty cool stuff.
For those of you […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, feed
Otto who is a well known and respected member of the WordPress community has published a pretty cool article (WordPress 2.7 Comment Enhancements) which explains the various comment enhancements which have made it to the core of WordPress 2.7 thus far. Otto’s reasoning behind the post was to allow theme authors to gain a head start on creating themes which will be compatible with WordPress 2.7. One thing to keep in mind while reading this article is that, this information was compiled from using the latest developmental version of WordPress 2.7. This means things may not be set in stone with further additions or retractions possible before the initial release.
Here are some of the enhancements that Otto covers:
Creating a 2.7 compatible comments.php file
Password protection check
The comments loop
The power of Ajax
Styling
Thanks Otto.
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog
Not too long ago, I published a post which dove into the controversial subject of comment ownership and I must say, you guys and gals came up with quite a bit of discussion points. In that post, here is how I described my position on the matter:
I don’t believe a commenting bill of rights needs to be created in which all blogs should follow. However, I do think that each blogger should create and make publicly accessible a commenting policy. This policy should clearly explain what you as the blog author will do with comments posted on your site, who retains ownership of those comments and explain circumstances which would require you to edit an end user’s comment.
For those of you that agree, I’d like to draw your attention to Alex King’s Comment License WordPress plugin. This plugin makes it as easy as 1 2 3 to add a commenting […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
