In So Many Words

I have been having a sudden influx of spam making it onto my blog posts, so I am temporarily activating the comment moderation feature. I will approve comments as quickly as I can, and I will make sure that anyone who enters the Hallmark giveaway today isn’t penalized by this action.

This is the first time I have seen Akismet not doing its job. Has anyone else had problems with it? And do you have any recommendations for alternatives?

Thanks, all!

UPDATED: I’m not sure how this happened, possibly during the last WordPress upgrade, but somehow the Akismet plugin had been deactivated on my blog. So that explains the spam going into the regular comment flow.

I appreciate everyone’s patience as I get this figured out!

Well, I by no means think I am deserving of this award, but I am thankful to Leah at Just Me for letting me know I am appreciated. If you haven’t met Leah, she is a pastor’s wife and mom to 4 girls, one of whom has special needs. She has also embarked on a spiritual journey that she is blogging about at 90 Days of Solitude.

I’ve been somewhat on again/off again with blogging in recent months, but every time I question whether I should continue, I realize how much it means to me to have this little place of my own and to connect with so many wonderful people. So I am working on not feeling guilty for posting irregularly or for not having time to visit other blogs and comment. I just try to enjoy the time I do get to spend online.

I have, however, spent a little bit of time working on my blog admin lately, and one of the things I did was to close the comments on posts older than 90 days. I hope it doesn’t turn people off, but it has really cut down the amount of spam considerably. Anyone who wants to contact me directly with any question or comment can still easily do so through my contact form.

I’ve also been playing around with the new version of my blog theme (Thesis 1.6) and was very happy to see the ability to assign colors right from the options page. With the nested navigational options, I was able to include my main categories at the top along with the pages I wanted but not have it look too cluttered or overwhelming. I can easily change the background image whenever I want and modify the text/link colors to match.

A couple of other things I did were to add a widgetized fat footer (thanks to this super-easy tutorial from Thesis Theme Tools) and to put my blogroll back in the sidebar. The blogroll only shows the most recently updated blogs, but you can still see the entire list via the Blogroll link in the footer.

Oh, and one last thing. Through a post on Howtomakemyblog.com, I found a plugin that allows you to add your Twitter ID in your comments on my blog. You just enter your Twitter username (no html or @) in the box below the comments box before you submit your comment, and a link to your Twitter profile will appear below your name. You only have to enter your Twitter ID one time and then it will save it just like it saves your name, etc.

Let me know what you think about any or all of the changes. I’d love any feedback or other ideas you have.

And then go visit some blogs that truly deserve a Best Blog Award —

• Simple Mom
• Steady Mom
• Zen Habits
• Becoming Minimalist

Last week, I posed the question, How do you handle comments on your blog? As a new blogger but a veteran of many Yahoo Groups and other message boards, I crave the conversation as much as or more than the opportunity to post my thoughts; I am just not clear on the best way to let people know I have heard what they said and I appreciate their comments.

Thus, the poll:

Several people replied that they use more than one of these options. PreSchool Mama also brought up the idea of returning the visit, which is a great one.

So from my highly scientific research, it appears that most people use the post comments to reply to their visitors. I plan to continue that practice because I think it adds to the conversations for future viewers of the post, even if the original commenter doesn’t return. I will, however, also incorporate the other methods as it seems appropriate.

Thanks for your participation!