DISQUS

I've been in the closed beta of this since they started it in August. I haven't seen any downside to it, although it wasn't a public beta.

But reading on their parent company site, they've partnered with Kontera (among others) and I'm wondering if this may be a way (for Kontera and website owners) to avoid Google's penalties for text linked ads. An interesting way to go about it, if it is.

Those are just thoughts that popped in my head on reading the news on Demand Media. I for one, have no objection to their plan the way they've set it up. And maybe I can earn a few cents now and then. :)

I'm a new subscriber, and I just have to come in and comment on this.

WordPress search is the absolute worst function there is.

If I'm looking for a particular post on my site (through the manage panel), and I *know* the keyword is in there, most times it will throw up completely irrelevant pages. I find myself using Google Toolbar to find those pages on my site (!).

That said, I do provide an advanced search for users on my site, which works great. Unfortunately, it's not available in the back end. Oh well. :-)

And as a corollary, I've taken to using Google Search on other sites as well, knowing that it's much much better.

Hello Jonathan. So sorry to hear of your recent troubles. Been there, done that, but without a recent backup. Over a month of posts had to be recreated. :(

If you want to check out a company that gives such great, fast, polite and efficient service, I would highly recommend Known Host. There is not one single bad review at Webhostingtalk.com for these guys, and based on that, and the fact all the reviews were excellent in regards to their service, I went with them after problems with my previous shared hosting.

Right now, they are running a great special (http://knownhost.com/specials.html) similar to the one I took, and I can tell you right now these guys are great. If you order cPanel or Plesk or Direct Admin ($5 more per month for the license), you get a fully managed VPS. When I say fully managed, I mean it. They go out of their way to help you. There is no reason for them to help with WordPress, but when they transferred my site over, there were issues with permissions and ownerships. They fixed it all.

If I open a ticket, I swear these guys have it fixed before I send it. You cannot go wrong with the knowledgeable service these guys (and gals) provide. I asked about installing something, and the reply that it was done came in the same mail as the autoreply to the ticket, in a five minute check.

If I sound like I'm a salesperson for them, it's because I'm so happy with them. Uptime since I moved there is 100%, and their forum has a place for updates and issues on each datacenter (they use three...you choose which you'd like). And it's kept very much up to date if an issue arises.

Hope things work out for you, and do definitely check out knownhost.

Oooh, I like the arrows. Much better. And way more intuitive.

I looked at the orignal (Vs) in Firefox on Windows.

About Twitter. I know a lot of people use it, and the new style minus Flash looks a lot more newsy. Almost like asides. I could live with that one. If only more people would go that way.

And although it may be a blog/reference hybrid, this is still THE place to go for copyright and plagiarism help. Which is why you're bookmarked under "References" in my list. :)

Well, I just have to chime in on this one. I think of this site as more a reference site, not a blog. And too many bloggy widgets in the sidebar do not appeal to me, even if they're only on individual pages. Sorry, but a thumbs down from me on those two changes (MyBlogLog and Twitter). And I'm not sure of the value of comment count under the read more links, but it's just my opinion.
Removing the full category list is good. I always thought of it as just sidebar clutter.
I like the drop down arrows, but it just looks like a v. Not necessarily intuitive.

Ah, I get it now. Yes, all rights reserved and some rights reserved are mutually exclusive. Guess I'll have to look closer when I use a Flickr image (and I use a lot of them).
Fortunately, most people at Flickr reply quickly when you ask to use a photo, and at least in my case, are willing to give permission.

P.S.
Did I tell you I really like how you've improved this site? It's absolutely gorgeous.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought of Creative Commons as a way to use the images, content, music, whatever without first getting permission. Copyright is still retained by the original author, it's just that permission is not needed to republish, as long as (depending on the level of CC) it's attributed, it's not used for commercial purposes and no works are derived from it. So in a sense, it's not mutually exclusive to have the copyright notice and a creative commons license.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse though, and ignorance of the license is probably a remnant of the early days on the web when everyone felt it was all fair game. Scrapers, of course, excluded. They're just baaaad. :)

It's sites like yours that help us all to learn, Jonathan. Keep up the great work.

Unfortunately, the service has seemed to become unavailable. :(

But the first thing I used it for was to check who is sharing my hosting space, because of slowdown issues. And found two porn sites that are the likely culprits.
It would also be useful to see how hosts are overselling space. I can live with 165 on my server, but places with over 300? Or more?
What other reasons did you come up with?

It's useful for lots of things, Jonathan, besides spamblog locating. Thanks for letting us know about this.

Yeah, it does that sometimes (hangs up). But when it works, it's great. I had it stuck at 11 ahead for two days. When I went there to recheck it, and although it said 7 ahead, it was done in seconds. Go figure. (?!?)

Actually, it may not have been that one I used. The one that I did use is legit, there is nothing to embed on your site, strictly online. It's at http://immike.net/charlotte/

You couldn't have selected a better theme. I love that one. It's so configurable and the info that Darren gives to help set it up is amazing.
So far, it's looking great and can't wait to see the finished product. Oh, and I do agree that the archives link can come down. It's kind of redundant with categories listed below it. I'll click on categories way before I'd ever look at archives (which are way too disorganized for actual use).

Wow, what a shocker. I've used it a couple of times, but never (fortunately) installed their little "brag/ad" box on my blog. Thanks for the heads up, Jonathan.

I agree with Cybele. It works about as well as copyscape does(n't).
I typed in a post I know had been scraped (thanks to Akismet) and it showed nada copies of the post.
I'm not impressed...it will be of no help whatsoever in helping find duplicate copies. I will continue to rely on Akismet trapping and technorati's incoming links (a great help).

I also use the related posts plugin, but find it to not always work too well. And this is the one that checks the content, not just the titles. In Series seems to allow the serial posts to be placed on a single page if you like, and I will be trying that out as soon as I finish the particular series I'm doing on one of my sites. And you control which posts are linked together. Good luck on the theme hunt. There are so many great ones out there, I find myself wanting to start new blogs just so I can use them. I have a whole folder filled with these excellent themes. Just found a new one today to play with. :)

Jonathan,
I have been using advanced search (the lite version). It's an excellent search engine, but I'm not sure how much of a drag it would be on the database. You have to install both, but I only activate the lite. It's at http://www.zirona.com/software/wordpress-advanc...
(GNU GPL license)
I've also recently found another plugin, In Series (at WordPress plugins database), that keeps posts together with a TOC and other stuff if they're in a series. Might want to investigate that.
About your theme, well, can't help you there, but you definitely need a new one. This one, while clean and simple, really doesn't leave you much play room for what you want. Good luck.

No stretch, Jonathan. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. First lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_of_Alex...
Maybe not quite 3,000 years, but I'd say 2,300 years is plenty old. :)

Architectural designs can certainly be copyrighted. But the actual building itself? Perhaps a better word would be patented. But his way of thinking was that no one would be able to photograph or paint it, or use its image anywhere, without paying royalties to the Lighthouse Foundation.
In that case, the US govt. owes some big bucks to them, because that lighthouse appears on the Maine State quarter.
There is a little confusion on the federal govt. creations being public domain. It applies to photos and some documents, but only to a certain extent.
If, for instance, a photo is taken by a member of the armed forces specifically for the government's usage, like in an official magazine or on a website, then that photo/story is in the public domain. If a civilian donates or gives permission to the govt. to use a photo or story on their web site or magazine, then that is NOT in the public domain. Copyright is still retained by the original photographer/writer. Just a little distinction some people might not know.
A P.S. on the lighthouse. The original lighthouse was created about the same time as the pyramids, so I have to assume that copyright holder is also dead.

I had to chuckle at the notion of copyrighting the pyramids. We have a director of a museum here in my small town in Maine that is trying to break the lease between the American Lighthouse Foundation and the Coast Guard, so the town would be able to get the lighthouse they'd rejected several years ago. One of his alarms was that if the ALF owns it, they'd copyright the lighthouse! And yes, he uttered it to newspaper. Somehow the notion of copyrighting a building just doesn't wash. :)

I arrived here from Problogger's charity giveaway. I saw this post and had to comment that it's so wrong to use an old phone number. Those poor people that may have your number! LOL!
I always give out the unused telephone exchange (for example: 555-0000), like is used on tv shows etc. That way I know I'm not giving out someone's real number. And yes, they do get used. I recently had to change my cell phone number because of telemarketers when I'd inadvertantly let Google toolbar fill in a form for me (and didn't check). My bad, but...
Nice site by the way, and good luck with the contest.