I forgot to mention yesterday that I actually got hit by a real comment spammer. Can you believe it, lil’ ol’ me?!?! I think putting links to your site on mine might actually decrease your page rank. For the most part any spam is quickly moderated by WordPress because I set a limit of 4 links per comment (a limit that has only caught one real comment in its trap). That lets me delete most of them before they even see the light of day. This guy (we’ll call him… fioricet), seemed to figure that out and only used 3 links. Tricky bastard. So a few actually appeared on the site before I got to delete them and ban his IP (and then the second one that he switched to).
The one thing I like about these guys is the random text that they grab to make it seem like they’re for real. This guy happened to quote Futurama:
Leela: Ah, maybe they’re right, maybe Nibbler is dumb.
Fry: Don’t listen to them, Leela. People said I was dumb but I proved them!
I almost left the comment and just deleted the links. They hit me with just over a dozen comments, so it wasn’t a big deal. Even if they all got through it would have taken me less than 30 seconds to delete them all. But it still makes me wonder, is my site really worth it? Sure, I’m still the one and only indieb0i, but that really doesn’t help my pagerank, much less anybody else’s. Probably time to look into one of the plugin solutions, such as Kitten’s Spam Words.
In the meantime, I am actually working off of the WP nightlies these day, and am seriously looking at a redesign. Most likely it will be based upon Michael Heilmann‘s wonderful Kubrick theme. In case you didn’t know, there’s a possibility that some of that design will find it’s way into the default template for WP 1.3. Sadly, a lot of people don’t think well for themselves and a near war broke out on the forums because of this pseudo-announcement. (Note: Feel free to read some of that exchange, but please don’t add to it. The thread appears to have finally, and rightfully, died.)
The plan was to write a whole diatribe about the stupidity of those involved. Well, at least those who were most responsible for the ridiculous assumptions that created the problems. But instead I think it is more important to focus on the positive, so I will simply direct those interested to Matt’s discussion of the matter. You might also find Joen’s write-up to be higly enlightening. For my part, I feel perhaps the time is coming for me to step up and really help out the community. I will be looking for ways to help out with WordPress, as soon as I take care of my own shit.