WordPress Plugins : Akismet

To start off my series of posts regarding WordPress plugins, I felt that I should first review the one plugin that comes with a clean install of WordPress that I ensure I enable straight away.

Akismet is a web service that checks each of your blog comments as they are made and attempts to determine whether they are legitimate or would be considered spam.  Looking at the stats in my WordPress dashboard, my installation of Akismet on this blog has caught 596 spam comments so far with an accuracy of 96.622%.

According to the Akismet website “86% of all comments are spam“.  If you aren’t using Akismet then you are leaving yourself wide open for a barrage of spam comments, especially as your blog has been online for a while.

Although I do occasionally get a ‘false positive’ (where Akismet has labeled a spam comment as being legitimate) the amount of time it saves me from going through each comment on a daily basis is enormous and best of all it is free.  You can download and use Akismet for free on your blog, as long as your return doesn’t exceed $500/month and if it does, you only have to pay $5/month for the privilege of using this great plugin.  The only requirement for this free service is to sign up for an API key via WordPress and you are all set.

If you have a blog, but you aren’t yet using Akismet to prevent spam comments on your blog then you need to download the plugin right away and get started.

This post has been the first of a variety I have planned regarding WordPress plugins that I make use of on a daily basis.  If you would like to keep track of the posts, sign up for my RSS feed or alternatively enter your email address in the form to the right and get them delivered directly to your email inbox.

DoFollow Blogging

I’ve just installed two more plugins to this blog which I hope will encourage more people to visit and begin posting relevant comments regarding topics I am covering.

The first is a removal of the nofollow attribute that is, by default, attached to links on the name of people who comment on your blog posts.  This plugin is called NoFollow Free and is very simple to install and customize.  Customisation options include the ability to only remove the nofollow attribute once a user has posted a certain number of comments and the addition of a CSS stripe in the corner of your blog to publicize the fact you are now ‘nofollow-free’ .  I have opted to remove the nofollow from all comments (aslong as you get past Akismet and my approval.

The second plugin is called CommentLuv and will display an exerpt of your latest blog post when you comment on one of mine (if it is able to ‘grab’ it).  In order to better explain what this plugin achieves, here are the plugin authors comments:

“Pass a bit of luv onto your commenters by providing a titled link to their last blog post. This plugin attempts to parse the feed of the comment author by visiting their site and looking in the standard locations for a feed. If no default feed is found, it will attempt to parse the users page for a feed link and parse that instead.“

If you like the sound of either of those two plugins, be sure to comment and let me know   I have also got other plugins currently installed and running, I’ll be sure to keep you updated shortly with what they are, and how they are benefiting my blog.

Increase Sociability

Using WordPress for my blogs back-end and structure there are a vast array of plugins that are freely available to change aspects of my blog, add new features or improve on current features. As soon as I installed this blog there were a selection of plugins that I installed straight away.

There is always discussion about how much traffic services like Digg and StumbleUpon can bring. Why not greet the visitors from these services with a nice welcome message. Personalising your blog could be one way of getting visitors to return and it can’t harm your readership by doing so.

The Increase Sociability plugin is very simple to install:

1. Upload the plugin to the WordPress plugins folder
2. Install the plugin from the Plugins tab in the WordPress Dashboard
3. Configure the Plugin from the Settings Menu

There are a variety of customisation options included with the plugin.

1. Your message can be displayed before, after or before and after each post.
2. You can customise the message text for visitors who arrive at your site from Digg.
3. You can customise the message text for visitors who arrive at your site via StumbleUpon.
4. You can even setup a message for visitors who appear from a customisable website of your choice.
5. While your at it, you can also choose to display a link back to the plugin author in your footer, although it is entirely up to you wether you wish to or not.

It has taken me just a couple of minutes to install the plugin and customise it to my liking. I am aware that none of my posts are currently showing up in either Digg or StumbleUpon but I am now prepared for when visitors begin to arrive from those resources.