So, I went to look for other alternative and finally decided to go back to my previous spam blocker, Spam Karma 2 (aka SK2, but of course not the one you girls use for makeups). I was convinced by the article written by D’Arcy about “Downgrading Akismet“. Quite a funny article as well. SPAM DIE DIE DIE! Don’t disappoint me, SK2.

Some good features of SK2:
- Ability to configure stricter protection on old posts with no activity (popular spam target)
- Additional CAPTCHA check if the comment’s karma is within a certain error margin, providing the commenter with a chance to prove himself innocent.

So wordpress users, are you still using Akismet or have you guys switched away long time ago? Or if you have a better spam protection for your blog, do let me know.

Download SK2 from Dave’s Blog.

Step 1: Adjust settings using Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is useful to adjust the way Googlebot crawl and index your site, so sign up with them if you haven’t. After logging in to Google Webmaster Tools, look under the “Preferred Domain” menu (on the left sidebar), choose the appropriate settings for your site.

Step 2: Set up a 301 Redirection
After you decided whether to include www or not, you have to make sure all visitors will end up at the same url. There are few ways of which this can be done using 301 redirection.

First step is if your site is hosted on a Linux server with Apache Mod-Rewrite module enabled.

a) redirect all http://www.yoursite.com to http://yoursite.com
Go to your root directory and add the following code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://yoursite.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

b) redirect all http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com
Go to your root directory and add the following code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Note: Make sure you chance yoursite.com in the code to your own site URL!

Alternative Step: Use A Wordpress Plugin (For Wordpress Users)
If you are not hosted on Linux server, or if you’re not using Apache, or if you are confused with editing the .htaccess file, use this plugin called WWW Redirect. You can set whether to have the www or not from your Wordpress Admin panel once you set this plugin up successfully.

Hope it works for all of you out there.

Reference: John Chow – Setting The Preferred Domain

Anyway, here’s the guide to add “Read More” link to your Wordpress blog. Under index.php (might be different depending on your Template/Theme), look for the following code:
<?php the_content(''); ?>

Replace with this:
<?php the_content('Read on...'); ?>

That’s it! Ok…so it’s “Read on…” and not “Read More”, but you can always change it to whatever you like. (How about “Eat more”?)

More customisations:
Customizing the Read More

Steps:
1. Download the plugin here: Right Click and Save As..
2. Upload to your Wordpress Plugin folder
3. Activate the Plugin.
4. Go to Options>>Writing>>
5. Uncheck the “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” option box.

That’s it!

For more customisation, visit the plugin author’s blog:
Code Markup – A Wordpress Plugin

It will appear only when the owner is logged in.

To add little “ummm”, use this code:
<?php edit_post_link('Nehneheneheneh'); ?>
Add anything you want to replace “Nehneheneheneh”.

For more info, visit:
Template Tags/Edit Post Link
Editing the Edit This WordPress Template Tag

-200MB space
-2GB bandwidth
-cPanel & Fantastico
-No ads required on your site at all!
-You can also host your own domain on our site or use our name: xyz.blorc.com
-Use any blogging software you like

The only thing you need to do is to post 200 constructive posts in Blorc forum (http://forum.blorc.com/) and then request for your free hosting, simple isn’t it?

Here’s the specification of the servers, very fast:

-Linux servers located in the US.
-Connection to the servers are from TimeWarner Gig-E (~1000Mbps) and UUNET OC-12 (~621Mbps) and by the end of this year, another from Level 3 Gig-E (~1000Mbps).
-Dual Xeons with 2GB RAM.

Get your free blog hosting now….limited space available.

Link: http://forum.blorc.com/

Why would I want it? Well, (almost) all WordPress users have a Skype account, and some of them want to make easy for their visitors to contact them . You could go to that website, enter your name, choose the design you like, copy the HTML from the tiny textarea, open up some file from your theme folder in a text editor and then paste that HTML into that file. And then do it all over again if you want to select a new button style. Or you could simply download this plugin, enter your Skype ID, choose the design you like, add a single line of code into a template and be done. If you want another style, then just go back to the options, choose it, save and it’s done.

If you still don’t know what Skype is, read more about it here: Link

Hi

Testing smilies

I dont think it’s going to work….

Edit: It did work.

At your new wordpress blog, go here:

http://yourblog.com/wp-admin/import-rss.php

Follow the directions. You may have to edit your import-rss.php file to add the link to your blogsome rss feed (http://yourblog.blogsome.com/feed/)

*** Warning! Before you actually run the import rss feature, you will have to reset your preferences under options > reading in your blogsome control panel so that all of your posts appear on the first page, and all are syndicated (I set both settings to “200″).

It will also import your post categories too. Cool!

The bad thing about this is comments are not exported from blogsome. Comments for the posts transferred are closed as well. I don’t know how to solve these two problems. But it does work in transferring the posts.

Source: Blogsome Forum

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