The problem with all of this is that a number of commenters leave a comment just for the backlink. These comments range from the “Me, Too’s and Way To Go Dudes” to ridiculous nonsense. I’ve noticed a trend over time toward more and more spammy comments on FreshBlogger as well as a number of highly irrelevant comments (followable links to something that has nothing to do with the content of the actual post).

I’m also concerned that the search engine rankings of this blog have suffered due to having a large number of irrelevant links, as well. I’m not going to pretend that the affects on revenue aren’t also influencing this decision. At one point, FreshBlogger had a PageRank of 5 and has since gone down to PR2. I realize that this isn’t the ultimate indicator of popularity, but it is indicative of a generally downward trend that has definitely been felt in terms of income.

So, while I welcome all comments that add something interesting, I’ve decided to stop using DoFollow. I realize this may cause some visitors to be less likely to leave a comment here. Fair enough.

I’ve done some searching and found that a few others share this sentiment and have likewise removed DoFollow from their blogs. A couple that I’ve come across are RT from Untwisted Vortex, “No More ‘Do Follow’” and Stephen Cronin from Scratch99, “Bye Bye DoFollow.”

What I can offer, though, is this: Since this is my personal blog and I tend to write about a number of different topics, I would be happy to link to your post or web page if I find it interesting or think it would be interesting to others who read this blog. Please feel free to leave a comment here or use the FreshBlogger Contact page to drop me a line.

I have plenty of ideas for new posts, but I’ve been busy with… Hell, I really have no excuses! I just haven’t been as motivated to post to this blog as I have been to do other, higher priority tasks in my life.

I’ve had a lot going on in the last few months, as I’m sure everyone else has. There have been a few changes in my life, but things are still getting better and better.

Some of the things I’m thinking about blogging about are employment (this is big with me now, for a number of reasons), self-improvement (because I’m fighting my way out of another rut), and motivation (which is really integral to improving yourself, but is still a separate issue).

With the recession currently big in the news (which I still try to stay away from!), I’m thinking more and more about ways of generating income on the side, so you can expect some future posts addressing this topic, too.

If you have any ideas for me or would just like to say hello, feel free to leave a comment or contact me via my contact page.

I hope to god some kind soul out there living in his mother’s basement will take some precious time away from masturbating to lesbian porn to show me the error of my ways in not upgrading my wordpress installation. Perhaps you can take away the few pennies I make from this little blog and show me the true meaning of life in pure Monte Python fashion.

I’m waiting with bated breath. I need schooling, I’m sure. Somehow, I’ve really screwed up by falling behind the times of the monthly or whatever schedule of wordpress releases. I must be crazy to risk my precious pennies against the ruthlessness of acne prone basement dwellers. I wonder if they put on their Star Wars costumes when they perpetrate their brave acts.

It’s possible that they gravitate more toward the benevolent and courageous Power Rangers of ridiculous special effects fame (No one has topped the pink ranger for sheer vacuous hotness). It would certainly be humbling to be put in my place by a person in such a cheesy rubber uniform. The humanity, the humanity… or rather, the horror, the horror…

Regardless, one of these days I’ll update. Maybe in the meantime I’ll make myself a target of the silly youngsters who sweat and blog in well-starched undergarments for the greater good of all. Ad majorem dei gloriam…

There’s nothing wrong with any of these practices, but your readers are most likely interested in reading something from you. They’ve come to your blog to read what you have to say and that’s why they keep returning. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind as you blog. The information you blog about is what draws visitors in the first place, but it’s your unique voice that keeps readers coming back.

So, how do you deal with the problem of not having enough time to post today? Easy. There’s a feature of WordPress (you are blogging with WordPress, right?) that allows you to save a post to be automatically published on a future date and at a future time.

All you have to do is go to the Write Post screen in your WordPress Administration page. Write your usual awesome article with a great SEO title and interesting, unique content. Then you just change the date and time in the Post Timestamp box in the lower right hand corner of the screen. Click the Publish button and you’re finished.

There are a couple of great reasons to make use of this feature. The first one we’ve already discussed; if you have time to write today, then you can write your article and have WordPress post it for you exactly when you want it to. Another great reason to make use of future posting is that it can help you become much more productive.

You may only have time one day a week to block out a few hours for blogging. You can best make use of this time by writing several posts as once while you’re motivated and focussed. Instead of taking you an hour a day, five days a week, it’s quite likely that you’ll be able to write those five posts in three hours or less. If you can reserve that time when you’re going to be free from distractions, you can be far more efficient in your blogging.

If you think this sounds like a great idea (or not), leave a comment and tell me about it. Also, if other common blogging platforms have a similar feature, write a how to post on it and I’ll update this post with a link.

With all this said, though, there are still way too many spam comments on this blog. I try to review at least the first couple of pages of spam comments each day in order to make sure there aren’t any real comments in there. This is tedious and time-consuming. I’m now thinking I need to do something a little different.

The experts say it’s best to take a layered or multi-pronged approach to fighting comment spam. I’m thinking this is very good advice and I’m ready to make some changes here. The obvious next step is to add some sort of verification to the commenting process. While this is an effective way of fighting spam, I don’t like the idea of making it harder for people to comment. I also absolutely hate captchas. If you’ve never heard that term before, they are the weird text images on login pages and comment forms that are not supposed to be able to be read by a bot.

I think the best solution to this problem is to use something like the Math Comment Spam Protection Plugin. This seems to be about the least annoying way of blocking all but the most sophisticated spambots. Before I install yet another plugin on this blog, I’d really like to get some feedback from you. Can anyone tell me about their experiences using this plugin or one that is similar to it? Do you think this is the best way to fight comment spam?

Even though this news is alarming for WordPress users like myself, I understand that this sort of thing can happen from time to time. The WordPress people are taking steps to find out exactly what happened and also to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. I’m just glad that WordPress is on top of it and working hard to maintain and improve this software. I’m also glad I didn’t have time to upgrade to 2.1.1 yet…

This release is mostly just a bugfix and security release and they are calling it a “low-to-medium priority update recommended for all WordPress users.” According to the release notes there are about 30 bugfixes included. I haven’t really noticed any major bugs in 2.1 yet. It seems to be the most stable and fast version of WordPress I’ve ever used. Regardless, I’ll be installing the latest update in the next couple of weeks and if you’re a WordPress user, you should probably do the same.