Exploring Social Media Tools Series

In October of 2008, I started a series called “Exploring Social Media” on the Blog Herald. The challenge was to dig into the myriad choices and options to dance the social dance online, to network, share, inform, and educate with the various tools available. I began by asking people to define social media, since it […]

Parent/Child Themes in WordPress: The Future of WordPress Themes

WordPress 2.7 now features parent/child WordPress Themes, a new feature that protects installed WordPress Themes while allowing customization. Customizations are storied in the “child” Theme, which loads first. If a Child Theme isn’t detected, WordPress loads the “parent” Theme. If you do not intend on making any customization to your WordPress Theme on your WordPress […]

WordPress 2.7 Release News and Links

Below is an updated list of articles I’ve found about WordPress 2.7 features and issues to prepare you for the exciting upcoming version of WordPress due out any moment. But first, this announcement. WordPress 2.6.5 Released: A security release of WordPress has come out and you are highly recommended to upgrade now, rather than wait […]

WordPress 2.7 News

There is a lot of news flying around about the upcoming HOT release of WordPress 2.7, the version featuring the new Administration Panel interface, part of a long project to make WordPress more usable and accessible. Originally scheduled for November 10, 2008, they’ve pushed back the release by at least two weeks in order to […]

Warning: Fake WordPress Malicious Site

Take care when searching for WordPress that you do not end up on a fake WordPress site. Wordpresz.org looks like the WordPress site but isn’t. This is just the first of what could be a run on fake sites that take advantage of your careless misspelling and spoofs the official WordPress site. Pay close attention […]

WordPress 2.6.2 Mandatory Upgrade

Ryan Boren has announced the mandatory WordPress 2.6.2 upgrade has been released and WordPress users are required to download WordPress 2.6.2 and upgrade immediately. This mandatory security upgrade adds protection for a SQL Column Truncation and other security and bug fixes. There is a full changeset and list of changed files to help you find […]

How to Access Banned WordPress.com Blogs

As discussed in WordPress.com Banned Again: Why Aren’t You Concerned?, WordPress.com continues to be a target for censorship and blocking from various countries and groups around the world attempting to penalize the whole for the “wrongs” of the few the courts or governments decide to penalize, those cutting off thousands of blogs from access. I […]

24 Reasons Why You Should Attend These Blog Conferences

I’ve got three blog conferences I’ll be speaking at, and I want to give you 24 good reasons why you should be at each of these. March 29-30 – WordCamp Dallas WordCamp Dallas is going to be one of the hottest WordPress-oriented blog events this year. People are flying in from all over the country […]

Weekly Digest: Lorelle in San Francisco, Heading to WordCamp Dallas, Pasadena, Chicago, and Writting About Blogging In Between Talks

It’s been a very busy week for me, traveling to San Francisco, meeting friends and clients, and having a great time. I went to an interesting seminar on US politics, which took an interesting turn recently. Also attended a book signing and talk by Bill Hayes, author of “The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s […]

The Sharing and Caring of the WordPress Community Shines

In Why Giving Away Your Code is Not Dangerous, Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts looks at the issue of “sharing” and Open Source from an interesting perspective: Imagine you run a transport service, ferrying passengers to destinations they want. A part of your job is to follow maps, find out new routes and build your knowledge […]

Are you Willing to Pay Taxes For Your Blog?

In “Taxes Have No Place On The Internet” by Don Reisinger on CNet’s Digital Home, he makes an important point that I thought would have gotten more discussion and coverage: The ban on the Internet tax is one of the most compelling and important bills to cross legislator desks in years. A tax of the […]

WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk

The following are my tips and recommendations to help you get the most out of WordPress, be it on WordPress.com or the full version of WordPress as presented to hundreds of WordPress fans at WordCamp Israel (English) recently. This is a fleshed-out version of my program notes outline, with links to more tips and recommendations […]

Do Business Blogs Need Help Pages?

By Greg Balanko-Dickson I was wondering what might happen if a blog or website had a set of help pages? We expect help pages when using a software or web application. We see About pages and FAQ on blogs but how often do we see a set of “Help” pages on a business blog? Never? […]

5 Advanced Techniques for Creating Plugins and Widgets for WordPress.com

by engtech of Internet Duct Tape As a reader of Lorelle On WordPress you might already know there is more than one type of WordPress blogging software, but most people who know what WordPress is have no idea there are different flavours of it. WordPress also called self-hosted WordPress, or WordPress.org has one blog that […]

When Akismet Goes Bad: What to do when Akismet starts spamming your own comments

The reason why I created Akismet Auntie Spam helper script was because I seem to have a problem few other people do — every couple of months Akismet decides that my own comments and trackbacks are spam. This is unforgivable and a fatal usability flaw in Akismet’s design. Comments and trackbacks from the blog admin should skip the spam check process. I challenge anyone who argues differently to have to deal with always having to double check if their own comments are marked as spam. The delay between posting a comment and it appearing in Akismet almost always assures that you will miss one or there will be an inordinate delay in responding to your commenters.

But enough of the ranting about my problems with Akismet. Here are two things you can do to help when Akismet is marking your own comments as spam.