Comments on: Quickies – September 14, 2006

By: HART

HART — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:30:16 +0000

Akismet is great. I’m not really sure how it works though, but take the time to denote the ones that go through and mark it as Spam to help Akismet. I might recall reading somewhere warning that when you do that – it adds a record to your own MySql database and over time – if you are the type of blog with lots of spam – your database gets too big or awkward to backup.

I’m monitoring it on my Curling Blog, where there are no posts during the offseason, and accumulating different sized files mailed to my gmail account automatically thanks to Skippy.net‘s wp-cron plugin.

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:23:13 +0000

Don’t you just love spam.:)

I’m using WP’s Akismet and really, 99% of my spam troubles have vanished. It’s been an awesome change from last year.

By: HART

HART — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:12:28 +0000

Hi Martin .. thanks for finding me over here, where I’m not so crazy

Can’t stress the importance of backups first .. but, as you know – even though we don’t know PHP .. it’s sometimes obvious in ways to tinker with the templates (making sure the DIV and /DIV and other tags are closed, leave HTML stuff outside the ?PHP and ? closing greater/lesser than signs, etc).

Usually in the bottom footer of my sites, I leave the designer of course, but add something ‘witty’ like PetLvr’ized by … 1800HART’icized by .. Crazy’ized by .. stuff like that and give me a bonus link to another one of my sites :

I just noticed that on this site .. my last update for Spam Karma2 seemed to have eaten my code and replaced it with its SpamEating count. I’ll have to fix that.

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:39:13 +0000

Hey Hart,

I’m like you – I have little to no knowledge of PHP (actually none) but I like to tinker with my templates and I think I’m getting pretty damn good at it.

Although I’ve always done so in the Dashboard > Presentation area. Just seems easier that way and I’ve done it from day one – and those habits you can’t break. I usually back-up, although I have been caught out on the odd occasion.

My downfall is usually playing around with CSS too much. I know what I want just gotta get that damn css to do it.

I’m a big user of free templates – I usually use it as a foundation and try to mould it into what I want – and I always give credit where it’s due.

Just seems respectful for all the hard work the designer put into it.