Claire’s Random Thoughts

Spam has always been a problem in wordpress blogs. I used to moderate all comments manually to prevent nonsense comments. However, this has been getting more annoying since I’m receiving 5-10 spam comments per day now.

Is wordpress spam also a problem for you? If it is, then here are some plugins to help regulate it. Of course, none of these are foolproof, but they do get rid of most of the spam comments.

Akismet is probably the most important spam killer. It has so far been pretty good at accurately detecting spam comments and filtering most of them out so I do not have to manually. It is definitely an essential for every blog.

Another one I am using is challenge. Challenge displays a math problem that the commenter has to solve each time he/she wants to comment. This probably also reduces spam, because chances are, few people are bored enough to do that many problems, and I don’t think spam bots can read the questions. Apologies to those who can’t do these problems. No offense, but I feel that such basic arithmetic should be something that everyone should know.

There is also a comment authorization plugin that I’m thinking about using. It sends an email with a unique url to the commenter, which he/she has to click on in order for the comment to be accepted. Please vote in the poll below to help me determine whether I should use this one or the math problem one. I would also appreciate comments explaining why the one chosen is preferred.

If you do not have site statistics built in with your web hosting provider, then I would recommend google analytics for very detailed statistics. When I first started this blog, I just used a freewebs counter to count page views. However, this did not tell me how many pages each visitor viewed, how many new/repeat visitors I had, or where my main sources were. Therefore, a couple days after I made this blog, I started using google analygics. Here are some of my statistics for those of you who want to see how google analytics is like:

Google analytics tells me how many of my visitors were new and how many were repeats. I seem to get mostly new visitors, but a few loyal visitors are returning. This is good in the sense that a lot of different people are looking at my blog but bad in the sense that not that many are bookmarking it and coming back later. Oh well, the main reason most poeple visit sites is for information. Once they get that information, they usually leave…

My traffic is still very unstable. If I write an interesting technical article and sumbit it to digg and reddit, then I get a lot of hits for a few hours. Once the story gets a few hours old, the visitors decline. I guess I still need more updated information if I want more visitors from those two sites. I have also been losing traffic since I have been posting less in bloggerforum. My signature was a link to my blog, and I often posted links to my blog with relevant information to certain threads.

Most of my visitors are still from the United States. This doesn’t surprise me that much, because a lot of the major computer nerds are from here.

It looks like I get links from various sources. The two big ones are digg and reddit, because they get lots of visitors themselves. I’m guessing that most of the direct requests are repeat visitors who have bookmarked me. Posting on bloggerforum and 110mb forums have also helped me a bit. It’s nice to see that I have a variety of sources, because 22.12% are still from other places. I’m guessing those places include some other forums, my xanga, and my main site.

Pretty graph! People are entering my blog at many different posts

I found this interesting. Statistically, over 60% of all internet users use Internet Explorer while a little over 30% use Firefox. Most of the other browsers are almost never used, for example, Opera is used less than 1% of the time. It’s interesting how since most of my visitors are webmasters, internet explorer is less popular. Firefox is the most popular browser among webmasters, because it actually is not only easy to use, but safer. Most of the more technologically experience people use Firefox.

Also interesting how my main audience is more likely to use an operating system other than Windows. Over 95% of all internet users use windows, but only 83.99% of my visitors were using it. Windows actually does suck, but I’m just using it because it has basically become the standard and is more compatible.

HAHAHAHAHA! I can’t believe 8.14% were still using dialup.

My search for a good free form processor consisted of a lot of disappointment and uneasiness. Every time I thought I found a good one, there would be either intrusive ads or some kind of limit in functions.

Why do I want a form generator anyway? It’s not safe to post my email on my site these days due to the high level of possible spam, but I would like a way for my visitors to contact me.

Phew, this annoying search and experiment process ended when I discovered formbuddy. Formbuddy allows me to create custom forms asking for whatever information I choose to ask for, and I can place them on my site with a professional look, just as if I had created the form myself. An example of such a form would be the one for my link exchange offer.
Here’s a screenshot if you’re too lazy to click on the link:

I always have all the data emailed to me rather than stored on formbuddy’s servers, but you can also store form submissions on formbuddy’s servers if you don’t like getting so many emails, some of which may be nonsense. I haven’t had a problem with spam yet, but I think it might be possible if somebody is bored enough to submit forms of nonsense.

After the user submits a form, he/she should be directed to any page you specify. This is usually a thank you page or a the same page that the form is placed on. Formbuddy will put a frame on the side with ads and say that the form was their’s, but I guess I can live with that. Only form submitters will see that anyway, so it should not be viewed that frequently
Formbuddy also allows you to store up to 500 forms for free so that you can later modify them or retrieve the code if needed.

How to customize the forms more:
The original form builder only gives you the options of inputting name, e-mail, gender, date of birth, address, country, phone, url, how did you find us, and comments/suggestions. The code generated is also design for a full html page rather than just a section of your page.
My suggestion for further customization is to first just check a few of those boxes and then click generate form. Chances are, you don’t want a full page just for your form, so cut out the top of the html code until and including the tag as well as the and and on the bottom.

How to customize inputs:
If you want the user to input a string, then use copy and paste the section of the code for name input like the one below.

Change the part that says Name: to whatever you want to be displayed, and change the part that says visitor_name to whatever you want to be displayed next to the input string in the email that will be sent to you.
If you would like a radio button input, then I recommend that you modify the Gender code.

original
Just adjust everything similarly to what you would do for the first example.
If you would like a dropdown menu with a few options, then I recommend modifying the how did you find us? code in the same way that you would do to the above two examples. I will skip explaining what to do, because it seems self-explanatory to any experienced webmaster.

Conclusively, formbuddy is one of the better free form generators out there, because it is customizable and appears ad free on your pages that you place forms on. I would definitely recommend it to those who do not have the server capacity to have a form or do not know how to create a form.

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Blog update:
I just removed a whole bunch of links in my links section. Those were from blogs that I was going to exchange links with but were owned by someone who didn’t add me yet. If you are one of these people and still wish to exchange, you must add me and then fill out the link exchange form telling me that you did. After this, I will put you back.

I’ve been searching all over the net for good wordpress plugins shortly after I started this blog. I have a few now, and I think I’ll stop working on the design for at least the next few days, because I’m satisfied with the current look and have already wasted enough time on the design.

If you haven’t noticed yet, then I’ll say so now. I’m a fan of randomizing, because over a few page views, I can display what I want without making the navigation bar too long or the header too big. I can also give the blog a different look or feel with different page loads, so the same design doesn’t get old.

Here are my randomness plugins:

FAlbum
I use this plugin to display my random photos. This is a pretty popular one that I saw on many other blogs, so I decided that it was cool and that I wanted one for myself. Then, I did a google search on random photos wordpress plugin and found what I was looking for. This plugin is an addon to flickr, so in order to use it, you must upload your pictures there.

Random Header
As I previously mentioned, I like to give my blog a different feel on different page views. All my headers have somewhat of a blue them, so they match the rest of the page, but I have several different ones, such as the original pool one, a winter one, a lighter blue one, and a couple more.

Random Quotes
I am a fan of witty and wise quotes, but I like way too many to display all at once. I use this plugin for my words of wisdom part of my sidebar.

I’m also trying to use this plugin (the only one that isn’t a random generator)
Xanga Cross Post
I would like to use this plugin to post on my xanga blog, but I can’t get it to work yet. For some reason, every time I enter my xanga username and password, I get a message saying that they’re invalid. If anyone knows how to use this plugin, then please comment on this post and show me. That would be greatly appreciated; thanks in advance.

Since I’m somewhat new to this whole mysql database thing, I couldn’t figure out how to import my old wordpress database, re-install wordpress, and still keep all my old posts. In fact, I just figured out how to install wordpress the proper way, that is without fantastico from cpanel. Unfortunately, I cancelled my old zzhosting account and don’t even have access to the files anymore. I guess I lost a couple of posts when I switched servers, but that should be worth it, because my site is now hosted for free at 110mb.com. Good thing I didn’t have much there yet. It’s funny how they’re still called 110mb, because now they offer 2 GB of storage with 15 GB of monthly bandwidth. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. Sure, the old one had more features, but this should be sufficient for a small personal site. Now I can save my $3.90 per month which changes the total cost of hosting to only $9 per year for my domain name. The main tradeoffs are no fantastico software (I have to download and install things manually now), no email (I guess the email I set up at my domain can’t be used anymore), and a little bit slower speed (Since it’s a free service, they put more sites on the same server. whois.sc says there are 492 on mine).
My goal in the next month or two is to familiarize myself with wordpress and mysql databases. They’re really important for any experienced webmaster to know, and I feel stupid knowing so little. On my old server, I just used fantastico and installed my stuff the “know-nothing” way.
I’m already feeling stupid now, because I can’t get my FAlbum that’s supposed to display random pictures on the side to work. Oh well, I’ll work on that after winter break starts.