DISQUS

Good for you! "Social networking" is ultimately antisocial when there's no "net" left after all the "work." Internet relationships already suffer from low bandwidth: we shouldn't rob friends of what little bandwidth there is by spending our attention capital on relational pyramid schemes.

Rich
BlogRodent

It was great to find this article! I'm presenting at the Internet Ministry Confence in September, and this is the topic of my presentation. Even for corporate (and especially for ministry) bloggers, it's all about the relationships.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

I'd never heard of the network your forming and will have to research this to learn more about it. I like what you've written here.

Thank you for honoring me by mentioning my PneumaBlog network. I really appreciate it.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Great tips, Glen, especially on finding your "voice." This is one of the hardest things for new writers/bloggers to achieve, principally because they simply haven't written enough. It takes time to develop a voice, and that time involves writing, writing, writing. After a time, one can write with multiple "voices," witness the best-selling fiction authors who have to master a different voice for each novel they write.

If you're interested, check out my take on blogging tips: "39 tips to improve weblog traffic and visibility."

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

I feel like I recognize scenes from this video from my own camp experiences as a kid. However, the trailer disturbs me greatly. I'll have to catch a screening and process my thinking on my blog, later. But, for now, I'm both horrified and compelled.

And embarrased.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Okay, I'm an id10t, I'll admit. But I'm looking at my wp-cache files, trying to figure out what the heck the "the regular 'load and output file'" section is so I can replace it with the suggested code, above.

I'm at sea, here. Exactly what portion of WP-cache code do I replace?

Rich.
BlogRodent

Like most bloggers, I've had waves of trackback, comment, and referrer spam hit my site from time to time. You think you're cruising free and easy until, wham!, you get blindsided by a thousand little spam entries that need to be deleted by hand, and then you have to go hunting for the perfect solution. Like many here, I've found Akismet to be a great solution for comment spam. Only maybe ten false positives and two or three false negatives out of 1,912 spams eaten.

To combat referrer spam I use referrer karma, but you have to keep a closer eye on RK to prevent legit users from being blocked (RK tests the referrer for a real link to the blog--which can fail if the referring page is behind a login, such as with webmail services).

For me, for now, turning off comments is simply not an option. Commenting has created relationships that simply wouldn't have existed without the sense of dialog that forms around posts. And not all commenters have blogs, and not all bloggers know to use trackback links (or care), and not all bloggers feel like turning an aside into a full-blown posts. Comments are a valuable part of the dialog.

Requiring all "comments" to be blog posts with trackbacks is like saying, "I will address you from my soapbox, and you must be silent. If you wish to speak to me, you must ascend to your own box."

When I blogged on a church shooting, the grandchild of one of the victims posted on my site. Then his mother contacted me via private post. When I blogged on Justin Berry, a personal friend of Justin's commented and contacted me privately. There are a few other examples of connections made and interesting relationships formed just from allowing comments and fomenting dialogue.

Let the Akismets and Bad Behaviors and Spam Karmas thrive. They are protecting a valuable commodity: dialog.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

Hey, I'm having the same problem with BlogJet, but the error is sporadic, and it only started recently. I'm wondering what's going on, because I didn't change anything on the server, and I didn't change anything on my PC.

Meanwhile, since you're a WordPress user, I suggest you do what I did for Technoratic tags. Install the SimpleTags plugin (http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/) and you can simply insert Technorati tags at the end of your post by enclosing a comma-seperated list with a set of tags like: <tag>keyword1, keword phrase2, other keyword</tag>.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent