Web Development

As a website owner, one of the most frustrating things is dealing with comment spam. Most of the spam comments are automated, and when you’re dealing with computer / database driven comments, a human will never win that battle.

One of the first WordPress plugins that I install across all of my websites is the Akismet plugin to prevent comment spam. The reason I use it is because it works almost flawlessly. Only periodically do I receive a comment that should have been marked as spam, and it’s a real time saver.

As you can see from the screenshot above, this morning, I passed half a million spam comments that were blocked by Akismet. Without this free comment spam plugin, I would have had to spend hours deleting comments, and I likely would miss real comments because of the amount that has been blocked.

Here’s a shout out to Akismet, one of the few plugins I have no reservations about using or recommending.

At the end of July, I announced some big changes to the comment section of my blog, and it seems that the changes were all generally well received… well, nobody mentioned that they hate them, so I assume they were pretty much well received. More importantly, I think the comment section makes it easier to have a discussion, which helps to enhance the articles.

Yesterday evening, I made one more noticable change to the comment section, and I hope you like (and will use) it. I have added “Agree” and “Disagree” links to each comment that is received. If you choose, you can click on the agree or disagree link, and the total number of other visitors who agreed or disagreed with the comment will be listed.

Although I wish everyone who reads my blog would comment (and comment more regularly), I think this feature will allow people to participate more passively.I hope this passive participation leads to more active participation.

What do you think about this new feature?

Although I’ve made several changes to my blog’s appearance during the last five years, I’ve kept the comment section pretty much the same as it was initially. I recently had some modifications done to the comment section, and I would like your feedback.

I changed the color scheme of the comments (previously alternated blue and white), and instead of random default avatars for those without them, it shows a greyed out ElliotsBlog logo. If you do have an avatar, it will show up to identify you. One big change is that the comments are now “nested.” This means you can hit reply to a comment, and your comment will appear underneath the comment, chronologically. I think it looks better than before and it’s more functional.

If you see anything buggy, please let me know. If you can think of a way to improve the format or design of the comment section, let me know that, too. If you like how the comments display and it looks clean to you, your feedback would also be appreciated so I know if the changes were for the better.

I opted against Facebook comments because if I were to ever opt against FB or decide to make a major change, I would lose all of the comments that were posted. I would also lose the previous comments made on the WordPress comment section.

Although I wish everyone used their real identities since I use mine, I understand why some people have the need to remain anonymous (some people would become targets if others knew about their wealth and/or investments). I don’t censor comments and I welcome critical comments as well, since that’s a good way to learn. I don’t permit hateful or threatening comments, and am very glad I haven’t really had to deal with that.

Please provide your feedback when  you have a chance… it’s appreciated and will benefit all of us.

BTW, thanks to Tia Wood for her help with these changes… It was custom work based on a few things I’ve seen elsewhere. Her work is much appreciated – and for a reasonable cost, too.

For most people who operate websites, their focus is on one or two main sites, and they are constantly working on those sites. Some people may have more sites than that, but ultimately, they spend their time working on their websites, so if something goes wrong, they know very quickly.

For domain investors who operate websites, their main focus may not be on their websites. Even if sites are generating tens of thousands of dollars a year in income, the sites may not be the primary focus. That means when there is a minor (or even a major) problem on a website, it might not be noticed right away.

One of my least trafficked websites is one that I haven’t done much with in a couple of months. Every now and again a new advertiser pays for an advertisement and I add an article or two for the blog. It’s sort of a “set it and forget it” type of directory website I built. This morning, I was approving an advertiser’s new listing when I did a couple of searches on the site. Nada. For some reason, the site isn’t returning results. Big problem in my book.

Fortunately, somewhere around 90% of the traffic is from search engines and goes to internal pages so the search functionality isn’t critical, but losing 10% of the traffic to a malfunctioning website is not good at all. It doesn’t leave a good impression on visitors and certainly advertisers. Unfortunately though, nobody emailed me about the issue and I didn’t notice it over the last month or so since the last update was done.

When you operate a number of websites and your primary focus isn’t those websites, you need to make sure you visit every week or two just to check on things. The sites may be fully functional on their own, but things happen, plugins break, and other issues come up that need to be resolved.

Luckily for me, this isn’t as  embarrassing  as it could have been had an advertiser noticed, but it is an important lesson for me and for those of you who passively operate websites.