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WordPress Wednesday News: Will You Turn Off Akismet? WordPress 2.4 Delayed, and More WordPress News
The Blog Herald
The Blog Herald

WordPress Wednesday News: Will You Turn Off Akismet? WordPress 2.4 Delayed, and More WordPress News

by
November 29, 2007

Are you willing to turn off all comment spam protection for one day? Akismet challenges you to take the chance! WordPress 2.4 delayed. Security issues over Plugins and cookies. Want instant reply and easy management of your blog comments? Did you know Automattic now supports some great WordPress Plugins? And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

Akismet Answering Comment Spam Questions: Mark is answering questions about comment spam on the Akismet blog, beginning with It really is spam?. He explains what comment spam used to look like, and how it is grown, and covers important points you need to know about including how the nofollow doesn’t work, comment spam/trackback spam association, spam economics, pingbacks/trackbacks and content theft, and how Akismet works best when we all work together.

He also adds that Jesper Rønn-Jensen is turning off all comment spam protection on December 15 to experience what it is really like to go without Akismet for just 24 hours. Mark invites you to have your own Turn Off Akismet Day, maybe even on the same day, just to remember what life would be like without Akismet. Then report in.

WordPress 2.4 Will Be Released January 24, 2008: Ryan Boren announced that WordPress 2.4 will now be released on January 24th instead of December 12, 2007. WordPress 2.4 will feature the new Administration Panels design, which will change the way the backend of WordPress works.

WordPress on Your Calendar: Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change):

If you are having a WordPress-related event that isn’t on the calendar, post them below or via email.

WordPress 2.3.1 Released: The latest version of WordPress is out and contains security fixes, which makes this a mandatory upgrade. For a list of all the changes between the last two versions, see the Trac, and . For more information, see Peter Westwood’s description of the changes in WordPress 2.3.1. Also see PlanetOzh’s WordPress Upgrade Script for those with shell access to their web server, making upgrading WordPress “a matter of painless seconds”.

WordPress Security News: WordPress Security: Blog Security reports there are several new vulnerabilities found recently with WordPress. They include:

They also are offering a new program called WPIDS – WordPress Intruder Detection System which is designed to detect attacks on your blog and more.

WordPress 2.4 Digest: In WordPress weekly digest 19th November to 25th November 2007, Westi reports that the holiday weekend has slowed down some of the development temporarily with WordPress 2.4, but work does continue with the addition of a debug backtrace for query logging code.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: Did you know you could have your say in how WordPress works? You can add your idea and vote on any of the ideas to push them to the top in getting them added or removed from WordPress future versions. The section on WordPress is an open forum for you to have your say. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.

Lorelle at WordCamp Israel: Last call for tips, tricks, and power techniques I offered in my presentation in Tel Aviv, WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk, with a lot of tips WordPress users should know about using WordPress and power blogging with WordPress.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Last week’s WordPress Wednesday News report covered WordCamp Melbourne Sold Out Success, WordPress 2.4 Delayed, Security News, Rumors and Scams, and More, if you would like to catch up with the news on WordPress.

WordPress.com News

WordPress.com W logoNew WordPress Theme for WordPress.com: WordPress.com announced a new Theme, The Journalist, has been added to its collection. It’s a simple, black-on-white, journalist/writer design with a fixed-width, two column layout and Widget support.

What’s Hot on WordPress.com? The hottest blogs on WordPress.com were:

The hottest blog posts on WordPress.com were:

New To WordPress.com: If you are new to blogging on WordPress.com, check out this basic guide on What Do I Do With My New WordPress.com Blog?.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

WordPress Plugins DatabaseFast Comment Management: Absolute Comments: Comment Manager with Instant Reply puts the “instant” into your comments management. It now includes threaded comments, customized reply formats, translations, and more.

Creating Multiple Dynamic Sidebars for WordPress Widgets: Quick Online Tips offers “How to Create Multiple Dynamic Sidebars for WordPress Widgets”, a tutorial that follows up on how to widgetize your WordPress Theme.

WordPress Super Cache Running in Windows IIs or Apache: The NeoSmart Files released “Getting WordPress Super Cache to Run on a Windows (IIS or Apache) Server” with tips and techniques for those wanting to run WordPress Super Cache Plugin on those server systems.

Worries About CommentLuv: I’m starting to find more blogs using the CommentLuv WordPress Plugin and I’m worried. The Plugin warns you that by posting a comment and including your blog’s URL in the form, it will then scrap your blog and parse out a most recent post from your blog and showcase it under your comment. The intent is lovely. It helps to promote your blog and blog content. It encourages traffic. It builds link networks. In theory.

I recently found it in use on two copyright violating splogs. Leaving a comment on those blogs to tell them they are violating my copyright allows them to scrap my site again and put a link from my site on theirs, which links back to mine. The other issues I have with it is that it slows down the reloading of the page after submitting the comment. One post took four minutes to load. I have many concerns, which you may, too. I’d like to recommend that the Plugin author add an option for us to choose whether or not we want to have our blog scraped and a post link added to their blog. Don’t force this option upon us. Let us choose.

Automattic WordPress Plugins: Automattic Projects is a listing of all the projects under the umbrella of Automattic. Most of these you know, such as WordPress.com, Akismet, WordPress.org, bbPress, and the new addition of Gravatar. What you might not know is that through the development of WordPress, there are a variety of WordPress Plugins and tools also under the care and feeding of Automattic. This means that they are often tested and updated to work with the latest version of WordPress, and will probably not disappear or lose support very soon.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: Some interesting WordPress Plugins I’ve stumbled across recently include:

See Also
Apple Silicon Processor
Apple Delays Launch of New M3 Apple Silicon into 2024

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, which now lists 1,204 plugins and 2,177,105 downloads, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection of WordPress Plugins released daily.

Most Popular WordPress Themes: The WordPress Theme Viewer features more than 10 million downloads now and lists the most popular WordPress Themes as:

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some featured articles and videos from around the WordPress Community and the , the online manual for WordPress Users, the source to turn to first for your WordPress help.

NOTE: If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips.

WordPress Community News

WordPress Community graphicWordPress Podcast: WordPress Podcast: Episode 31: Automattic acquires Gravatar, Automattic being acquired? is the latest podcast for the WordPress Community and covers those topics and more including the new native tag feature in WordPress, hot Plugins, Themes, and news.

WordPress for Dummies: WordPress for Dummies was officially released Monday, October 29 by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

Need Help With WordPressMU? Work is ongoing to improve the WordPressMU documentation on the WordPress Codex. If you need help and information on WordPressMU, start there.

WordPress Installed For Free: If you have problems installing the full version of WordPress, visit Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress). This free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? WordPress Consultants on is a list of experts you can hire to help you with WordPress Themes, WordPress development, WordPress Plugins, or other WordPress-related expertise. Also see the WordPress Jobs listings, the WP-Pro mailing list.

Using WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s name or URL unless you have permission of and . Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “WordPress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Even More WordPress News?

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

Each Wednesday on is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

The author of Lorelle on WordPress and the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging for over 15 years, covering blogging, WordPress, travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development extensively as web technologies developed.

View Comments (12)

  • I can kinda understand why you might want to experience life without Akismet for a day, but the fact is I still fight a modest level of spam each day on each blog, regardless of Akismet.

    If someone suggested a “stab yourself in the arm repeatedly with a knife day” I wouldn’t participate, and I’m struggling to see the benefit of this, either.

    I know Akismet is good, just like I know the locks on my front door are good. I’m not going to do a “leave your front door open for a day” either. :)

  • Hi, thanks for the suggestion for CommentLuv. I’ll add the option to turn it off for a comment if the user adds [noluv] to the comment and have it available on the next release.

  • Its an interesting idea and one that i wish Jester well with. But having done some rough calculations the anti spam solutions on my blog saves me 100 minutes a day deleting spam and i want those 100 minutes for other stuff, like doing nothing.

    So i will just keep paying my akismet subscription instead.

  • having a day without akismet is like having a turn off your security system day and advertising it to the world.

  • I’ve changed the code to use a checkbox on the comment form for CommentLuv now, I’ll test it out on my blog for a few days before I release it.

  • Wow. You are so right. I have used some of your advice and really look forward to reading more of your posts.

  • I’ve noticed a huge difference in the number and quality of comments after I installed CommentLuv. Especially when people see I approve comments that are of value in bot information and aren’t simply one liners that want to get links back to their site.

    I would encourage anyone who has a blog to seriously consider installing the CommentLuv plugin and at least consider removing the nofollow tag. Sure you might get a few spam comments, but you can always delete these instead of approving. Remember, comments are content for your site, fresh content, and if the person leaving the comment has written something of value then it can help when the search spiders crawl your site for fresh content.

    Regards,

    Ian (Make Everything EzyAs123) Richardson

  • @Ian Richardson:

    Glad you have found such a response. Many reported no difference nor influence in Does Dofollow Influence Your Willingness to Comment?. Since Nofollow isn’t recognized by search engines other than Google, and even then, Google indexes the comments and their promises to not give “credit” to such links don’t hold up, nofollow is dead and dofollow only a marketing illusion.

    I’m glad it’s working for you, however, I’m sure there are other aspects of your blogging and attention to readership and comments that influences that perception. Most find this just another piece of clutter on their blog since it doesn’t give anything to anyone, including the blogger. Glad it’s working for you. I’d like to think it’s your content and blogging style that is influencing such improvements – as that is the most important dictator of comment response and quality.

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