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Technorati Tags: GoDaddy, MySQL, upgrade

Usually, the comments appear on posts in the archive and contain elements in common — such as smiley faces — that make me think that someone or some entity is trying to gain some sort of SEO advantage by leaving the comments and a link to their various websites.

I try to catch spammy comments and mark them as such to help Akismet learn of new spammers, but I have been getting a handful of such comments daily. Usually the comments come in overnight, so I assume they are being done from someplace overseas during their local daytime hours.

The comments aren’t necessarily bad or spammy in themselves. It’s just the fact that they are linking to spammy sites. I don’t want to encourage the spammers to continue leaving comments that I have to remove on a daily basis.

Should I keep marking the comments that are half-way on point as spam?

Should I break their URLS and keep the comment that might make sense, but that doesn’t add much to the conversation?

Is there some sort of WordPress plug-in that might help with the situation?

Let me know by leaving a comment if you’ve experienced the same issue and have found a way to counteract the situation.

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Technorati Tags: blogging, spam

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Technorati Tags: #blognwi, #nwindiana, blogging, new, Northwest Indiana

The creators of NWIFeed have come up with a great idea that connects Northwest Indiana bloggers with each other in a peer-ranked listing of popular local blog posts.

It takes the idea of BlogNetNews’s Indiana feed and expands it into a superb way to keep up with what’s happening in Valparaiso, Munster, Crown Point and everywhere else in Northwest Indiana.  Not only is NWIFeed a more localized way to keep up with what’s on the minds of Lake, LaPorte and Porter County’s intelligentsia, it’s a new way to interact within the blogosphere.

A user can nominate a blog post, then Tweet it, and others can “Feed” it if they like it.

“Feeding” a post on NWIFeed is a vote for the story.  The more people “feeding” a story, the higher it goes in the NWIFeed rankings.

I remember working with Steve Dalton — a prolific Valparaiso-based blogger — in the past on trying to promote NWI blogging by various methods — blog listings, recaps and blog carnivals.  All were labor intensive and difficult to maintain along with work and family commitments.  While I’m not sure of all of the wizardry behind NWIFeed, it seems to be a system that will work because NWI bloggers are “feeding” the information into the system and the site’s coding takes care of the rest.

If you haven’t used NWIFeed yet, it’s a worthwhile source for Northwest Indiana news and opinion.

Nominate some of your favorite blog’s posts to be placed into the arena of ideas.  It’s great fun and an excellent way to keep up with what is happening in the region’s new media world.

Photo credit: brianbutko

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Technorati Tags: NWI blogs, NWIFeed, social media