Reporting Spam Blogs – Splogs

Quick Online Tips recently posted “How to Complain and Report Spam Blogger Blogs”, a good look at the procedures you need to take to report, and hopefully remove, splogs. A splog is a “spam blog”, a blog that copies content from other blogs without permission (though there might be a link back), using that content […]

Want to Help Google Clean Up Splogs?

In response to Matt Cutts’ request on how Google should work on web spam, a friend of mine gives him a very good summary of how Google can put an end to one the biggest blights on the web: splogs. In A big free clue for Google, he points out: Like many bloggers I can […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Splogs – The Dark Side of Blogging

Blogging is wonderful. It is free spirited babbling of all types, shapes, and sizes. Unfortunately, like all positive and wonderful things, there are a negative, nasty side to blogs: Splogs. Unfortunately, because they are part of the dark side of blogging, I’ve written about them over the past year. In “Reporting Spam Blogs: Splogs”, I […]

Content Theft and WordPress

I and many WordPress “representatives”, along with the developers and staff of WordPress and Automattic, are getting more and more complaints and requests for help dealing with content theft issues. We all need to clear this up and spread the word about how this works in relationship to WordPress. In order to go after a […]

How To Spot a Splog

After publishing “One Year Anniversary Review: Splogs – The Dark Side of Blogging”, I had several people ask me how to know if a blog is a splog or spam blog. Here are some simple clues to look for. In a Splog, Nothing Adds Up Nor Matches Splogs, spamming blogs, are often little more than […]

Do Not Delete Comment Spam. Mark Spam as Spam.

Is comment spam one of the things that gets you down? Are you taking it personally? Are you confused by comment spam and how to handle it? I’ve been speaking at a variety of meetups lately on web publishing, blogging, and podcasting, and the topics often turn to managing comments and comment spam. “I’ve started […]

WordPress News on the Blog Herald

The past few weeks of the Blog Herald’s WordPress News reports that I do have been huge. Each one now takes many hours to produce, rounding up all the news from WordPress developers, Plugin and Theme developers, WordPress.com, WordPress fan podcasts and blogs, and the WordPress Community. WordPress 2.7 is the biggest WordPress version ever, […]

How to Add MyFreeCopyright To Your WordPress Blog

404 Tech Support has just published step-by-step instructions on how to addMyFreeCopyright.com to your WordPress.com or WordPress blog. The directions are specific to WordPress.com, but will work for any blog or website. It’s also a prime example of how to use the WordPress Widget to add text to your sidebar. The code used in the […]

Weekly Digest: Catching Up, Speaking San Francisco, Future Post Mixup, Talking to Blogger Talks, and More

Yikes, it’s been a rough few weeks. Along with some nasty business stuff, which is actually normal in my line of work, I was supposed to be on my first real, non-working vacation in 14 years, which turned into a workation. What should have been normal was much less fun than usual as my husband […]

Weekly Digest: Floods, Harp Guitars, WordPress 2.4 News, and Improving Your Blog Tips

I’ve been back for a week and already have been snowed, hailed, rained, frozen, and flooded. The electricity held but the Internet was down most of four days, so I got a lot of behind the scenes work done, as well as unpacking. I’m playing catch up as fast and furious as I can amidst […]

How to Stop Content Theft: The Best Tips

One of my heroes, Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, whom I’ve written much about and love his work on the Blog Herald, has simplified the issue of content theft into two brilliant and understandable articles. 5 Content Theft Myths and Why They Are False deals with the myths that often keep us from responding and […]

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 […]

Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content

Last week, an article I wrote for the Blog Herald, Blogging Outside of Your Community By Not Blogging in Your Native Tongue, caught the attention of more than just the readers. It caught the attention of the staff of the Blog Herald by attracting a very unusual trackback from a new kind of copyright violating […]

Fighting Comment Spam: WordPress Comments Mass Edit Mode

Every once in a while, the comment spammers win. Just a little. They use new techniques, new IP addresses, some method that slips by Akismet and other comment spam fighting tools. Your Comments Panel overflows with comment spam. After marking 10 or 20 as comment spam, your natural inclination is to fire off an angry […]

Checking WordPress for Comment Spam That Slips By You

A six month old post got a comment yesterday. Responding to the comment, I noticed a comment spam above it with obscene language in it. Specifically, a request for fetish sex. I was so embarrassed that this person had left a comment and saw that as the last comment. I’m so fussy about monitoring for […]