No hiding - I’m a huge fan of RSS.

The only problem I see with RSS right now is that not enough people know what it is and how to use it. What’s worse is so many don’t know why they should be using it.

So I’m always looking for simple explanations and tutorials that can help spread the message of RSS.

Just yesterday I found this short video on YouTube [ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]

Does this error message look familiar? If so, perhaps you’re locked out of your WordPress blog like I was this morning.

I could browse around just fine on my blog itself. However when I tried to do anything else I got this error message:

Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-admin/moderation.php (requested file changes based on task) on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 4428-b779-1366-73cd

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact dawudmiracle at gmail.com and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

Didn’t matter what I tried - comments, add post, delete spam, even update my profile - nothing worked. So I tried logging out and back in only to find out that I couldn’t log back in.

After a bit of frustration I found the error related to the Bad Behavior plugin. Here’s what Michael Hampton, BB’s developer said:

…Yesterday I moved all of my sites to a new dedicated server. In the process, I decommissioned an old blacklist I was running which I thought wasn’t being used, not realizing that Bad Behavior was still set to use it. Shortly afterward, I found myself locked out of my own blog, just as you all did. So therefore, this release.

So if you use Bad Behavior, you probably want to upgrade immediately (link begins download).

To upgrade the plugin simply do the following:

1. Download the latest version of Bad Behavior (2.0.11)
2. Unzip the download
3. Create an FTP connect to your WordPress plugins folder (wp-content/plugins/)
4. Upload the entire Bad Behavior folder into your plugins folder, overwriting the one that’s currenly there.
5. Try logging back into your WordPress admin

This should be fixed. It certainly worked for me. Just to be clear, I could browse my blog just fine. I just couldn’t do anything on it.

And…thanks to Joanna Young from BusinessBlogAngel for first bringing this error to my attention when she tried to leave a comment. Joanna, and everyone else, the issue is resolved so please join back in the conversation.

Comment spam. Don’t you love it?

I’ve been officially blogging since January 8th and I’ve already collected and deleted more than 600 spam comments. In the same amount of time I’ve recorded more than 200 legitimate comments Akismet (thank you to all of you, by the way). If it wasn’t for , I can’t imagine how much more work blogging would be.

So far Akismet has caught every piece of comment spam while only catching three legitimate comments. So I want to send a shout out to Matt Mullenweg of WordPress for it’s development. As of 6:40am this morning, here’s the amount of spam Akismet has caught. I refreshed the page a few times and the numbers jump quite a bit in only seconds between refreshes. And look at this number - 94% of all comments Akismet catches is spam. WOW!

Steve Rubel reports that eBuilt Group tracked 8.8 million pings on weblogs.com between January 23rd and January 26th and found that 53% of all pings is spam, 64% of all pings from blogs in English is spam and 56% of all pinging blogs are spam. Amazing, huh?

And it’s not just post comments. The blogosphere is riddled with spammers. ProBlogger cites that MyBlogLog is having to create their own anti-spam policy. I guess where there’s success, there’s freeloading spammers waiting to pounce.
So that leads me to the question…does spam work? It has too, right? I mean if it didn’t work, why would it be so prevalent? So while I just delete it without as much as a glace, others must be allowing it on their blogs.

Well, we can all do something to combat it?

1. First moderate all your comments.
2. Second, get a comment spam filter in place for your blog. For WordPress Akismet or Spam Karma 2 work great. Movable Type and TypePad users, check out Six Apart’s Anti-Spam Plugin Page. If you use Blogger, you’re likely using captcha, which also works well.
3. Third, don’t ever click on a spam link. Doing so is like responding - you’ll get flooded with spam after that.
4. Fourth, when you’re moderating your comments, error on caution. I delete any comment that doesn’t look legitimate, even if the comment is a nice one. Look at the email and web addresses of the comment for origin. That often gives it away.

You really can combat comment spam. Most bloggers do it. If you don’t, begin with the steps above and you’ll find some immediate relief.

And, let’s ask our readers - what have you done to successfully combat comment spam?

Need to learn how to use some software? How about brushing up on more advanced techniques in Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver or Filemaker Pro?

Well, David Blatner at IndesignSecrets is spreading the word about a free one-week subscription to Lynda.com. If you don’t know, Lynda.com has a huge library of training videos (16,654 according to their website) for a large number of software titles. There doesn’t appear to be any catch - just that your subscription will expire on Jan 16 whether you use it or not.

Over the years, I’ve learned quite a bit of software techniques using services like Lynda. I happen to be a good visual learner and so video works well for me. Much better than pounding through a monolithic ‘how-to’ book. So give it a try.

Here’s the signup link. Remember, the trial ends by Jan 16, 2007.

UPDATE: I’m wrong about the trial subscription expiration date. Anne-Marie, co-host at InDesignSecrets informed me that the trial period ends one week after signup. See her comments below. Thanks Anne-Marie.

Here’s a pretty good video done by Jack Humphrey at The Friday Traffic Report. I found this video on YouTube. Check it out. If you don’t know what trackbacks are, how to create them and what marketing advantages they provide, Jack does a pretty good job with this intro/how-to.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCCq3K7XpEI[/video]