Speaking of bugs…who’s that guy up there in the corner? Well, that’s me, of course. You finally get to see what I look like (without having to dig around my bio page).

Well, I’m back. Yeah, I know it’s been a while. But I’ve been pretty hard at work.

You’ll also notice that in my month-long absence, I’ve managed to complete a new design of my blog. My goal was to clear out the clutter so the good stuff would be easier to find.

And while I don’t see this layout as being complete, I felt it was close enough to launch it tonight. What I’d love is your feedback. What do you like and don’t like. What works, what doesn’t. And please, if you run into any bugs, let me know. If you could list the browser and operating system you’re using that would be most helpful.

I’m really excited about the layout changes. I’ve got lots of plans for the coming year - including podcasts and video casts. I’m also working on a customized homepage layout - which I’m in no rush to put up.

[ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]

Without a doubt, I’m a WordPress evangelist. I absolutely love WordPress. I’ve not found a better platform for building and managing a website. Doesn’t matter whether you’re blogging, have a store front, create a massive business site or need a basic, static website to promote your services and products - WordPress can manage it all.

One of the most remarkable things about WordPress for me is the huge development community that supports it. First, WordPress is free (you can even get it installed for free on your server). Second, it’s infinitely expandable through thousands of plugins, add-ons and widgets. If you need a function for your site, it’s likely someone’s already written a plugin to do it.

Yet one of the places that I feel WordPress really shines is in all the free themes (templates) that are available. Basically, thousands of developers from all over the world have created visual designs for WordPress. And while some premium themes are available for between $50 & $250, there are thousands of themes that are completely free.

Just like WordPress, free is a good thing. And, as your developing, updating or enhancing your web business web presence, it can sometimes be good to do so on a small budget.

Here are WordPress theme catalogs, each having many (and in some cases thousands) of free WordPress themes: [ 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.

This has been a crazy spam week for me.

For the past few months I’ve been using Akismet with the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin. The usual number of comment spam I would get was between 25-50 daily, with almost no comments ending up in spam.

Then Lorelle suggested that I remove the Math Comment Spam Protection and install Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior. It made sense. And since I deeply trust Lorelle’s judgment on anything WordPress, I did it.

But since changing, I’ve been bombed with spam comments. Just yesterday I got 1,400 spam comments caught by Akismet - and that doesn’t include the 800 that Bad Behavior says it caught.

What gives? Why am I all of sudden being bombarded with spam?

Lorelle told me, and I ultimately believe her, that the Math Comment Spam Protection didn’t work. So no fault of hers.

Yet this tidal wave of spam hit me when I took down Math Comment Spam Protection and installed Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior?

Coincidence?

Have I set something wrong with Bad Behavior and/or Spam Karma2? Or did the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin really work for me?

What are your thoughts?

Have you seen a huge increase in comment spam this week?

Any great resources for Bad Behavior or Spam Karma2 setup?

If you use WordPress you likely know who Lorelle VanFossen is. If you don’t know who she is yet, don’t worry…you will soon.

Lorelle VanFossen, of course, writes Lorelle on WordPress (RSS) - one of the best resources for anything relating to WordPress. Need a plugin? Lorelle’s likely written about it. Need to solve a problem? Lorelle may have covered it. Want the latest news? Lorelle’s the one. She even sums it all up with her WordPress Wednesday column on Blog Hearld (RSS).

Lorelle’s done it all. Including make every blogging mistake possible. At least that’s what she said in her interview with Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips (RSS).

Daniel: What is the biggest blogging mistake you did?

Lorelle: Oh, honey, I’ve done them all. I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve done all the big mistakes. When I read through blog posts listing their blogging mistakes, I think, “Yep, did that one in 2001. Oh, that one, I did it big in 1998. Been there, done that in 2004. Won’t repeat that mistake of 1997.”

Is there just one big mistake? Nope. There are only big lessons that come from every mistake along the blogging path. I tend to focus on the lessons learned and not the screw-ups.

Lessons…that’s the perspective I love about Lorelle. Having spent some time with her at SOBCon07 back in May, it was easy to fall in love with her. She’s real, she’s honest and she doesn’t judge. And just like me, she has her opinions…

Daniel: How long should a blogger wait to monetize the blog?

Lorelle: I do not think bloggers should monetize their blogs. I think that people who want to get into the business of blogging must make a business plan on how they will use blogging for their business or as their business, thus creating a plan for monetizing their blogs.

But general bloggers? Why should your hobby make money? If you want to work your way towards professional blogging, then blog for a year or two to get a feel for blogging and make your business plan. Then move towards being a professional blogger.

I couldn’t agree more. Too many bloggers are watching what the business bloggers are doing and think about the “easy money” they could be making off their blogs. But it’s not easy money. It’s hard work.

But so is blogging in general. Some days it’s easy, some it’s hard. Everyday it’s effort. That’s why many blogs aren’t successful.
And that’s what I love about Lorelle, she tells it like it is. She doesn’t sugar coat it. She’s honest about the ups and downs. That why I recommend that everyone read her new book, Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

I’ve read it three times cover to cover and it’s full of great advice. It’s literally the first blogging book I’ve read that’s really about blogging. Most blog books spend way too much time covering blog platforms or why to blog. Authors sometimes spend 1/2 to 3/4 of a book getting to the meat.

Blogging Tips is different in that Lorelle assumes you’ll get that type of information elsewhere. Instead, she gets right into meat. I highly recommend her book (and I’m not getting an affiliate kickback to say that).

I also really enjoyed Adii’s interview with Lorelle where they talk a bit more WordPress.

You know, it’s also kind of challenging to find photos of Lorelle. I snagged one with her and David Dalka (he’s on the right, I’m on the left and Lorelle is between us) when we were at SOBCon.

with my blog.

I spent a bit of time over the night upgrading to WordPress 2.2 (from 2.0.3). I’m already loving the upgrade. Why?

• The speed optimizations. This version is really quite faster than the previous one I was using - both on the browser side and admin.
• I love being able to scan back through all my comments (previous version only allowed me to see last 20 comments)
• I like the admin tab enhancements. It’s great that Comments now has its own tab.
• It’s great to be able to deactivate all plugins at once.
• Did I mention it’s faster?

I’m quite happy with the upgrade. I have a couple of small hiccups and found a plugin that I couldn’t get to work. Luckily it was a minor plugin. Otherwise, no problems with the upgrade.

And I know that with all computer upgrades there could be some hiccups. So, please, if you find anything that’s not functioning correctly on my site, would you let me know in the comment box?

Thanks, in advance.

And if you’re the do-it-yourselfer, there’s a number of tutorials on how to make the jump to 2.2, including in the WordPress Codex. And if you’re using version 2.1.x, this is considered a mandatory upgrade.

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]