How to prevent Spam bots - Ask a question! February 3, 2009
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its true. We’ve been inundated with spambots seeking to do two things.
1. Set up a free blog.
2. Register as a user and make spammy comments on posts.
In the second case download and install askimet ASAP. It covers spam comments superbly and will soon rectify all but the most hardcore cases.
The spam blogs being set up were rather unique to us. They originated from a few IP’s and we’re slow to ban IP’s around here unless the problem is extreme! So we’ve implemented an ‘human’ question that rotates at random and which we can update. Easy questions like ‘how many fingers on one hand’ and ‘what is 2+2?’. Result?
No spam in the last 4 hours. Finally a chance to eat dinner!!
Of course we’ll never stop all spam. But in most cases new blogs are reviewed within the hour and the SPAM deleted. At least no-one else will have to read their trash, even if we have to!!
Preventing Spam January 30, 2009
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As the popularity of our free blogs grows, so too does our spam problem. We’ve implemented some backend stuff, along with some tick boxes on the signup page. We’re also going to introduce a random question like (2+2=?) or display a pictures and ask for the answer (e.g. an apple or orange).
We’re not really big fans of capcha’s around here. Personally I find them intensely annoying. My eyesight isn’t bad but even I have some difficulty sometimes distinguishing the letters from the background on some capcha’s. Some research is also now saying that bots are begninning to get around them.
Of course you can implement all the checks and balances you want, but you’ll never really filter out the human spammers. These are the guys paid to sit there, sign up to your blog, make a random post with a link to some obscene site. They do this all day. Every day. the only method of defeating these is really checking your comments and signups and deleting the spam ones.
We do it vigourously. If somebody wants to pay some guy to continue signing up all day, we can continue to delete his signup all day. It takes us one click to delete. It takes them 3 clicks to sign up. Na-na-na-na!! Of course we’re entirely dependent on the spammer eventually going away or ignoring us as being useless for backlinks….
Unfortunately its part of internet life deleting spammers. They must be making money, I’m unsure why else somebody would send out millions of emails in a week advertising some new **product** or service. I genuinely believe its only those not used to the internet, or who click on their links by accident that actually end up there.
Whilst this will at least prevent the automated bots
Changing headers on your free blog January 24, 2009
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How do I change the headers on my blog?
This gets asked a lot and depends entirely on the theme you are using. Some these allow you to edit the background images used in the header. Some allow you to edit the background text used. Others automatically create their header from the default options in the config panel.
To see if your theme has an editable header, click on ‘Design’ in your wordpress admin panel. If you see an option directly underneath such as ‘Edit Images’ or “ThemeName” then you can edit away to your hearts content. If not, then there is no option to edit the headers.
We’re currently proceeding throught the templates one by one ensuring all are in in tip-top shape. Its why this blogs templates keep changing! We’ll be reverting to the default once everything has been checked and double checked. With over 100 templates to get through, its slow progress!!
SEO Changes to Forums and Blogs January 23, 2009
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After a hectic two days we’ve installed some components to create even better search engine optimization.
First the forums.
We’ve introduced a much needed system of meta tagging. It works by way of plugin and MUST be activated from your free forum admin panel. Click on plugins, look for “Meta Tag Generator (1.1)” and click activate!. To set your individual ‘default’ tags, for example on your home page, go to ‘configuration’. Scroll down the list of settings until you arrive at ‘Meta Tag Generator’. There are two boxes, one for meta description the other for meta keywords. Complete both as you wish and click save! All done!
At the moment, the meta description is generated automatically. Which means it will differ from page to page on your forum. The Keywords remain static throughout (i.e. they appear as you set them in the meta tag settings above). We will edit this in the future to create dynamic meta keywords, but more pressing issues are to hand at the moment!
For the blogs, the system is much the same. We’ve installled the All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbet. This needs to be activated from your free blog admin panel. Once activated, click on settings and then click on the option ‘All in one SEO’. From this page you can set default options.
This is a great step for Free-Blog.biz and its users. We’re looking forward to further enhancements in the SEO area, but over the next few days it’s back to creating and modifying templates for us!
Ploughing on! January 21, 2009
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Been busy with two things the last few days.
1. Site promotion with the search engines
2. Themes and templates (again).
We’re also busy modifying some Search engine optimization stuff. Top of the list for tomorrow is inserting custom meta tags on the forums to reflect each individual site and the topic.
We’re in two minds on whether to include default data like ‘free-blog.biz, free blogs and forums’. On the one hand it would be great for us, but it means if you have a forum set up say about cars, and if your meta data isn’t set up, your description in Google might just show up as ‘free-blog.biz, free blogs and forums’. This is of course no help to you at all.
On the balance we’ll probably do custom meta tags and if for some reason they can’t be generated for a post or topic, we’ll remove the tags meaning Google and any other half decent search engine will atttempt to actually extract the text for a description from the page. So you might actually end up with something relating to cars!!