Holiday Season Kicks Off – 2 Weeks in Review!

(Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes)

Another Week in Review!

It’s more like two weeks in review… Friday after Thanksgiving was a day off. In fact, between Startup Weekend and Thanksgiving, it’s been a bit slow on the blogging front around Website In A Weekend. This is by design. Insiders: expect a newsletter with some details.

The irony of it all

Poking around in my RSS reader this morning found me reading Extreme John’s latest Sunday Smash. John linked back to my “cave exploring” article (see below), along with an article on Smashing Magazine entitled “The death of the boring blog post?” Normally, I don’t link to Smashing, because their comment policy is draconian: they do not allow any linking from comments. This means no URL linked from your name. Simply put, there’s no return in commenting at Smashing, and you can’t easily visit other commentator’s websites.

Now here’s the irony: List posts have been correctly identified as some of the least valuable material on the web, for good reason, but Smashing Magazine is basically founded on list posts. Granted, nobody writes list posts like Smashing. They’re the best, by far. In any case, I read a bit of the “boring blog post” article (link above), then scanned the rest of it very quickly.

Because it was too hard to read.

Yes, the article is beautiful, like a high fashion magazine. But no, I’m not going to write any articles like those. I’ll just continue to buy Vogue or V Magazine when I want my design fix.

Smashing wasn’t the first to bash on boring blog posts, and they won’t be the last. But it’s largely irrelevant. What people don’t realize is that having lots of boring blog posts, published regularly, is rewarded with traffic and search ranking. That’s a fact.

I’ll have more to say about Smashing soon. [Update 12/11/2009: In the meantime, @drawar has plenty to say in "Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me)."]

I’m such a spammer

I’m going through my blog post draft queue, looking for stuff to delete. Here’s one: “WordPress Gotcha! WP SpamFree.” This is what I have so far:

Here’s the deal: I write decent, if not good comments, always. When WP-SpamFree pop ups it’s smug little “Hmmm… Your comment seems a little spammy, go back and try again.” I leave.

And I don’t return.

Feel free to provide me with advice for better commenting.

By all means, point out what is unacceptable.

Patronize me and I’ll forget you exist.

I was going to write a whole “Gotcha!” on this plugin, but it’s not worth the effort. Much better fodder for a Week in Review.

So I poked around the web a bit, to see what I could see. Due diligence and all that. As it turns out, WP-SpamFree has had a mixed reception. Some people love it. Other people have complained about it, whence the plugin author usually shows up to explain they have misconfigured it somehow. I wonder if he’ll show up here? Find more information by searching Google.

I’ve tried leaving comments on several blogs and had problems. Now, when I see this plugin, I don’t bother with leaving comments, and I don’t put the blog in my feed. It’s nothing personal at this point, just more time effective to visit someone else.

What’s your experience? Have you used this plugin? Been accused of being spammy?

For what it’s worth, Website In A Weekend uses Akismet, NoSpamNX and Cookies for Comments. Each of which use “no-configuration” configuration. Seems to be a killer combination, and I haven’t had any complaints from people unable to leave comments.

If you do have a problem leaving comments on Website In A Weekend, by all means let me know. I’ll get it handled ricky tic.

WordPress 2.9 is coming!

I’m keeping an eye on the development news, and you should too. If you haven’t been following it, there’s a lot of good stuff coming.

If I understand correctly, one of the most important new features will be extending content types past the usual “post” and “page.” This is something I’ve wanted bad enough to talk to Deacon about implementing myself… which would have meant hacking the WordPress core. I’ll have more to say about extended content types once I get a chance to look at them closely.

The latest and greatest

Here’s the last two weeks on Website In A Weekend. Did you miss anything?

• Startup Weekend Silicon Valley – WordPress for Rapid Prototyping. Startup Weekends are exploding across the world. It’s an international phenomenum. Read more, find out what you’re missing, and we’ll see you at the next!
• Stop It! Three Things to Stop Doing In Your PPC Campaign. If you aren’t getting great results in your PPC campaign, the Clicking Chick will set you straight. You owe it to yourself: save money, increase profit.
• WordPress Case Study: Bad Deacon Design launches Woodblock 101. WordPress is an excellent platform for building your small business presence on the internet. Find out how Deacon leverages WordPress to market unique art.
• Technical Haiku – The Art of the Screen Shot With Techsmith Jing. See how Jing provides just the right number of features to provide you with maximum power and flexibility to create killer screenshots.
• Happy Thanksgiving – Take some time off, too. Step away from the blog. Slowly… no sudden moves… the holiday season has started. Happy Thanksgiving!
• Your Ability to Write Is Your Ticket To Entry (not your ticket to gettin’ some). Writing for a blog doesn’t mean squat. Unless you have game enough to understand the writing is just your ticket in the door. You got game enough to win?
• DIY WordPress: Creating Sidebars On-the-Fly in WordPress. Custom sidebars demystified! Kip Praslowicz reveals killer technique for custom “programming without programming.” Faster, better design: less money!
• How Learning to Blog is Like Exploring Caves. When blogging leaves you lost in the dark, you’re not alone. Just as each underground cave is unique, everyone makes their own map to success.

The Week In Review Series

Last WIAW Week in Review

Where goes Website In A Weekend? Another Week in Review. Website In A Weekend continues to evolve: new material and products are in the pipeline, find out how you might be able to help.

Next WIAW Week in Review

Stay tuned…