Killing SPAM in your website comments

Posted by Steve on Sep 9, 2010 in Website Tools

WordPress "Recent Comment" moderation screen

This website like so many others (in fact millions) uses a Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress and one great feature about WordPress is that your website visitors can make comments about your articles. The problem with this is that there are also millions of people who just want to get a link to their own website no matter what it takes. This is another form of SPAM that owners of interactive sites need to be aware of and the good news is there is a service called AKISMET that helps to eliminate SPAM comments on your WordPress website.

I recently setup the Blog-style website for The Cartooning College and as a result saw first hand just how many people try to make SPAM comments on this website alone. The good news about WordPress websites is you can configure them so that comments need to be moderated before they become public and you can delete all the SPAM comments. If the number of emails you get with “comment SPAM” becomes annoying, like it did for the Cartooning College, you can install a “plugin” called AKISMET and this will eliminate most of the SPAM comments.

You can get a good looking website using a professional WordPress template using the 123ezy website and email marketing service from EzyLearn Pty Ltd.

Why I choose WordPress for a small business blog

Posted by Steve on Oct 10, 2009 in News

A blog is an interesting concept. It is used to share opinions, provide advice and bring traffic to your website. It’s like have a space to write articles in a major newspaper publication that everyone looks forward to reading. You can get paid for it or use it to bring traffic to your website.

There are a wide variety of blogging tools out there. You could go to a blogging site like blogger.com and create one quickly, then start typing. You could go directly to WordPress and create one to start adding your ideas and thoughts. If you are going to build a serious blog though, and make the committment to keep adding to it on a regular basis, then you really want to have it at your own domain (like slisar.com.au).

I simply logged into the cPanel (administration section of my website hosting account, provided by 123ezy), then clicked on the Fantastico icon to look at all the scripts I could install quite easily. By the way, the modern term for a program is “script”. I then clicked WordPress and installed it in a matter of minutes.

Finally, one of the best parts of WordPress is that because it is used so widely there are many people who create templates (or themes) to use with your WordPress script. You still create new blog posts and maintain your WordPress blog as you normally would, but it looks completely different to the public. Now, that is technology at work for you. If you don’t like the themes out there that you can buy for about US$75 (check out www.press75.com), then you can purchase and download a program that allows you to create your own templates (themes). If you get really good at it, you can start selling your own WordPress themes. Check out www.artisteer.com.

There we have it. Creating a blog is better at your own domain and WordPress is such a versatile script (and free) that I wouldn’t look anywhere else. Enjoy your blogging.