Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

The Triangle Is Complete

Gardening | Posted by Dean
Mar 24 2009

I am now happy to report that the FaceBook <> Twitter <> WordPress triangle is complete. It appears that the Twitter Updater is now functioning. This issue was rather peculiar in that for anyone with a FaceBook ID over a certain value the application simply did not function. This has been corrected with a new version now available.

I have now been using it for 24 hours and it has worked flawlessly. Thanks to the team behind the Twitter Updater for taking the time to diagnose, understand, and correct the issue.


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Twitter, FaceBook and WordPress … Why is it so hard to set up a triangle!

Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Mar 17 2009

Recently I decided that I would give FaceBook a crack. Low and behold I am enjoying it a lot as I am reconnecting with friends and colleagues that I had lost contact with since leaving WA. Further, the Drinking Wars application has got me hooked, yes I know that sounds lame. Anyway, I also decided to delve into Twitter on Saturday.

Now at this stage the jury is out on the benefits of Twitter. As a friend recently put it Twitter is just the FaceBook status update. Essentially he is correct, however there are a few people on Twitter that I would like to keep in contact with. Hell, who knows others may pop up over time.

Taking his comment though I thought wouldn’t it be cool if I could push blog announcements to Twitter and FaceBook. This has been accomplished and works well using established WordPress Plugins (Twitter Tools and WordBook). So I can now announce to both Social Networks that I have published something to read.

I also decided to allow Twitter Tools to construct a daily and monthly blog entry of all tweets. This would then serve as a record of those actions on that site within my blog. Yes this is not necessarily a well structured post, but it is captured a snapshot of my activities. As it is a blog entry it is also announced on FaceBook, good stuff. This will also mean that lengthy times without a post will not occur as I am constantly on the Twitter doing stuff … at least until I get the final leg of the triangle in motion..

I then thought about completing the triangle. That is “FaceBook to WordPress” and “FaceBook to Twitter”. “FaceBook to WordPress” was easily accomplished by the PressThis plugin that interrogates my FaceBook status newsfeed. This is then placed in my sidebar. Brilliant, yes there is a bit of delay, but I can live with that. Heck, I can live with once every 24 hour updates from Twitter, so once every hour for FaceBook updates is brilliant.

So the final part of the triangle is “FaceBook to Twitter”. This is proving problematic as the only available FaceBook application (Twitter Updater) to perform this task seems to not be working for 50% of its user base since FaceBook updated it’s publisher and home pages to the new look. I am hopeful that the developers are working on this and that all should be well soon, however it is frustrating to say the least presently. Something that seems so simple is proving very difficult indeed.

PS: I have also seen that for some reason my Twitter account was receiving over 100 attempts for remote access. Whilst I am hesitant to blame the Twitter Updater it is hard to see what else could be the source of this bombardment.


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Blog Maintenance Day

Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Mar 14 2009

Today has been blog update day. I have patched both this site and Socko’s Spot to the latest version of WordPress. This has been a long overdue update and was delayed due to my rampant apathy. It is now finally completed.

I also took the opportunity to review the plugins I had installed. I have removed several that we no longer of much use. I have though added the Sociable add-in to allow anyone that cares to share an article very easy access to do so. This replaced another less functional social bookmarking site.

As of a week or so ago I have jumped into using FaceBook quite heavily. I have as a result looked for and found a nice plugin that will update my Facebook whenever I publish an article. The plugin is called WordBook by Robert Tsai and is allowing me to update both sites very easily indeed. The update will appear as a post on my profile.

I also decided to join Twitter and have added a WordPress plugin to automatically send an update whenever a blog is posted. This plugin is called Twitter Tools and is written by Alex King. Again allowing me to perform two things with one click.

Anyway, thats it for now.


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The “U Comment, I Follow” Revolution

Geek, Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Jan 07 2008

Recently I became aware that the default installation of WordPress marks all comment links with the rel=’nofollow’ tag. The effect of this tag is that search engine spiders such as GoogleBot will not follow the link to your site, thus the only effect of the comment is if a human follows the link.

The origins of the nofollow tag are steeped in the early days of blogging where spammers were common place, and spam control mechanisms were not. The nofollow thus presented the nefarious activities of the spammer resulting in a profit from the increased sales of whatever product they were pushing.

In the current day however there are multiple spam control options available to combat this disgraceful activity. In fact one is shipped with WordPress by default in akismet. They are very effective and constantly updated. They are not faultless so the blog administrator should review all comments. However, the amount of illegitimate spam is vastly reduced. As a result the nofollow tag is less a legitimate spam control mechanism.

Given the effects of the spam control mechanisms I believe that commenters should be rewarded for their commentary. So I thought I would check the WordPress Dashboard and look for a simple toggle option for enabling/disabling the tag. Unfortunately, it is not a natively user configurable option. I hope that makes it into WordPress 2.5.

As such I have over the previous few days been investigating ways to remove the nofollow tag from comments. After a brief Google search I found the dofollow plugin by Kimmo Suominen. The plugin is highly configurable, but as mentioned earlier an administrator should still check comments regularly to ensure they are relevant and are not some clever spam.

I also found a complimentary plugin called CommentLuv. This plugin will interrogate the supplied URL and if possible retrieve the commenters last blog and place a direct deep nofollow free backlink to it. In this way other blog commenters will see potentially interesting content and visit. Further, search robots will also follow the link to the post.

With these natural advantages I decided to display that SCHWOIT is a proud believer in the I Follow Movement. Again looking at the fiddyp site I found the fast friends follow fair comments post. I liked the design and so decided to integrate it with my design. It is displayed in the header floating over the Bird Of Paradise leaf.

I am a proud member of this movement and encourage all bloggers to embrace the movement.


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Improve WordPress Performance

Geek, Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Jan 04 2008

Whilst cruising around the Entrecard member sites dropping cards I often find some great articles and tips. The latest little gem is a real corker. It is the How Fast is your WordPress Blog. It came in very handy for me as I was noticing increasingly slow load times on SCHWOIT. However, by following the simple suggestions and processes suggest by Paul I have improved the load times to be once again fast.


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