Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

• Snow Leopard Features Suggest It’s a Touchscreen OS – If you’ve got one of Axiotron’s awesome Modbooks, and you’re running Snow Leopard, you may have already stumbled across a few features that make your Mac so much easier to use. It’s unlikely Apple had Axiotron in mind when it included these features, though, so what’s the real story here? On TheAppleBlog. Thanks to @DonPerrault for sharing the link on Twitter.
• Must-have / essential applications on Mac OS X (10.6 – Snow Leopard) – Interesting list of applications that a Snow Leopard user might want to have on his system. By Trent Lloyd.
• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review – Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard has landed. This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood. John Siracusa dives deep into Apple's new OS offering to see what's new, what's still the same, and whether it's worth upgrading.
• Snow Leopard’s Four Best Improvements (for Civilians) – Most of Mac OS 10.6's changes are deep in its underpinnings for developers to put to good use. But what do the rest of us get out of Snow Leopard? Modest, but nice, improvements to the everyday Mac workflow. Note: This isn't a thorough Snow Leopard review. It's a boiled-down, "what's in it for me" rundown for time-strapped folks who want the bottom line. On Lifehacker.
• MacJury #913: Passing Judgement on Snow Leopard (Part 2) – More MacJurors weigh in on the newest version of Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. This panel discusses why Snow Leopard looks better and what that means for graphics professionals as well as the casual user, why the transition to Snow Leopard is “important but not urgent,” and the issues surrounding QuickTime 10. The panel also discusses why the newest version of the Mac OS will force developers to stay focused, and share some of the best new changes to existing features. Featuring yours truly as one of the jurists.
• Old WordPress Versions Under Attack – Otto42 of OttoDestruct, a key WordPress developer and supporter, reports that there is an “attack” on older versions of WordPress right now. The number of sites hit by this is growing every hour. Protect your WordPress blog now: UPDATE NOW!!! On Lorelle on WordPress.
• How to Keep WordPress Secure – Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. From Matt on WordPress.org.
• If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers – This is why I don't do Web work for other people. Brilliant! On DigitalSurvivors.
• Fonts for web design: a primer – Modern CSS provides web designers with an unprecedented level of control over online typography. Restrictions are still imposed however by the limited number of “common” fonts—those typefaces that are generally available cross-platform. This article looks at the fonts web designers have available to them, and also considers their suitability for various tasks. On dev.opera.com.
• Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – A Wired.com product review.
• How to Build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, Start to Finish – Detailed instructions for putting Snow Leopard on a netbook for under $900. On Lifehacker.
• Snow Leopard Is Less Secure but Safer than Windows, Say Experts – The title says it all. Read more on Lifehacker.com.
• Upgrading Your Mac To Snow Leopard Using Your USB drive – Jeffry Thurana Explains how to upgrade a Mac without an optical drive. On MakeUseOf.com.
• Found Footage: Snow Leopard hidden features, great video by a 16 year-old – Matt Fisher has created a video on hidden features in Snow Leopard and although we have covered some of these before, this you have to see. In four minutes and twenty-nine seconds Matt covers more content than most people can cover in an hour, and he does it with grace and total clarity. On TUAW.
• Snow Leopard: what’s to love (or at least appreciate) – A list of improvements in Snow Leopard that you might not initially notice. On TUAW.
• Use New Exposé Features in Snow Leopard – In Mac OS X 10.5, you could combine the use of Exposé's Application Windows mode and the Command-Tab application switcher by first activating Exposé and then pressing Command-Tab. When you selected another application and released Command-Tab, that application would come to the foreground in Exposé mode, revealing all its windows. Alternatively, you could release just the Command key, and cycle through all your applications (while still in Exposé mode) by just pressing the Tab key. Read more on PCWorld.com
• 50 Essential Web Typography Tutorials, Tips, Guides and Best Practices – The title says it all; the article has links to 50 resources. On Speckyboy Design Magazine. Thanks to @EstherSchindler for sharing the link.
• How-To: Resurrect Your AppleTalk Printer in Snow Leopard – Did Snow Leopard leave your old AppleTalk printer out in the cold? Grab a hot cup of cocoa and warm your printer up with some of these handy tips to continue to use your classic AppleTalk printer with your state of the art operating system. On The Apple Blog.
• Three Useful Snow Leopard Links… – Author and programmer Dave Mark shares three links to software you might want to install on Snow Leopard. (I use 2 of the 3.) On Dave Mark's Blog.
• 18 Resources to Help you Write Better Blog Titles – This is one I really needed and should study. I write the crappies blog titles. But it's an important skill to master if you want more hits. Thanks to @estherschindler for tweeting the link. On Bloggusion.com
• Install Snow Leopard on Your Hackintosh PC, No Hacking Required – If you're not comfortable with command-line hacking, you can now install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh with just a few point-and-clicks. On LifeHacker.
• The Snow Leopard appreciation society – "A lot has been written about Snow Leopard since its release two weeks ago: but maybe the best way of describing Apple's latest operating system update is by comparing it to a second-hand Volkswagen I owned a couple of years after finishing university." Read more on ZDNet.com.
• Snow Leopard Gives 50% Performance Boost When Running Optimized Software | Cult of Mac – Snow Leopard can give your Mac a 50% performance improvement when running optimized software, a developer has found. On CultOfMac.
• QuickBooks update adds Snow Leopard support, bug fixes – Intuit has released the QuickBooks 2009 for Mac R8.2 patch, adding Snow Leopard support to the small-business financial software. On MacNN.
• Report: Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter – Nine most effective ways to get retweeted on Twitter. On FastCompany. Thanks to @WeberBooks for sharing the link.
• See Hidden Files in Snow Leopard’s Open and Save Dialogs – Business Center – PC World – Many of OS X's files and folders are hidden when working with the system–most of the Unix-only folders, such as /usr, /etc, and /bin, for instance. If you want to always see these hidden files and folders, you can do just that. On PC World.
• Snow Leopard tip: Minimize to icon – Now you can minimize windows "behind" their parent app's icon. Here's how. On TUAW.
• Inside Snow Leopard’s UTI: Apple fixes the Creator Code – Snow Leopard's abandonment of Creator Code metadata, used to open a file with its creating application, has some users are worried that Apple has killed off a core Mac-centric feature. Instead, Apple has invented a superior alternative for the old Creator Code in order to support a variety of new features. Here's why, and what the new Uniform Type Identifiers offer. On Apple Insider.

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Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

• 10 HTML Tag Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit – Fun article listing and describing 10 common HTML mistakes. On Line25.com.
• A hundred million mistakes: Microsoft’s Bing search engine – Microsoft throwing away money on advertsing for Bing? On Good Experience. Thanks to @Jen4Web for tweeting the link.
• The Funny Side of Mac vs Pc – Three Mac vs. PC parody videos, two of which are done in "South Park" style. Thanks to @cleverdaisies on Twitter for sharing the link.
• There’s an art to writing on Facebook or Twitter — really – Interesting article about writing Twitter updates. On USA Today.com. Thanks to @blancastella on Twitter for sharing the link.
• Ironic But True — Many On Twitter Are Just Silent – My question is, why the hell do these people have Twitter accounts? Thanks to @Jodene on Twitter for sharing this link.
• To Tweet? To Twitter? The Final Word On Proper Twitter Lingo – Mashable reports on the AP Style Book's inclusion of Twitter lingo. Thanks to @jenniferwhitley for sharing this link.
• PC World’s Cover Reveals the Truth – Too funny. This HAS to be a setup. Thanks to @danfrakes for sharing this one.
• The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection – What happens in a matter of milliseconds is mind-boggling. The Internet is far more complex than you probably think. On Moserware.
• 20 Most Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes – These are pretty good. Thanks to @EstherSchindler on Twitter for sharing the link.
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard – Enhancements and Refinements – Apple's summary of new features in Snow Leopard. On Apple.com.
• 19 Twitter Desktop Apps Compared – On Mashable. Thanks to @mjvalente on Twitter for sharing the link.

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Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

• Internet Star @ Least 473 Years Old – Interesting article in the NYTimes blog about the history of the @ sign as it is widely used today. Thanks to @sherrieholmes for sharing the link.
• The Do’s & Don’ts of Modern Web Design – Excellent and simple list of things to do and avoid when creating a Web page or site.
• Exploring Social Media: What’s in Your Bio? – Here's a Blog Herald post by Lorelle VanFossen that expands on a post I did a while back about social networking bios. It's an honor to be quoted on The Blog Herald.
• Why Buy the Milk When You’re Following the Cow on Twitter? – Is Twitter killing traditional print media by removing the need for advertising? On LAWeekly.com. Thanks to @estherschindler for sharing the link.
• 20 CSS Short Hands You’ll Love – Great tutorial for CSS. On webhostingsearch.com.
• MacVoices #971: Maria Langer’s Newest Video Course Helps You Learn To Twitter Effectively – My most recent MacVoices interview. In this one, I talk to host Chuck Joiner about my Twitter course for Lynda.com.
• Twitter Search to dive deeper, rank results – A milestone for Google and Twitter. On CNet.com. Thanks to @jodene for tweeting the link.
• The Ultimate Guide to .htaccess Files – Good reference material for anyone interested in creating or tweaking their .htaccess file. On Nettuts+.
• 7 reasons why the business world hates social media – Interesting take on why the business world is not fully embracing Social Media. On Visionary Marketing.
• Five reasons why your company blog sucks – You think you’re doing it right, but no one is reading it. Here's what you might be doing wrong. On The Viral Garden.
• The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter – Excellent article on Mashable about how journalists can make the most of Twitter.
• Repper -> create your own patterns! – Excellent online tool for creating patterns based on portions of images you upload.
• 100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009 – Good collection of interesting themes for WordPress. On Smashing Magazine.com.
• The Life and Death of a Twitter Topic – This image graphically explains the rise and fall of a trending topic. Personally, I don't think there would be trending topic peaks like we're seeing if Twitter didn't put them on the home page. All they've done is give people a reason to include certain words/phrases in their tweets on the off chance that their tweet will appear when someone investigates the trending topic. In other words, it's all bullshit.
• The Great Address Book Cleanup – Some tips for cleaning up your Mac OS X Address Book file By Andy Piper on The Lost Outpost.
• PrintFriendly – Excellent utility for making printer friendly or PDF versions of Web pages. A WordPress plugin is also available. Online; no special software needed.

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One of the things I like to do — but don’t get a chance to do very often these days — is talk to podcasters and other media people about the projects I’ve worked on.

Earlier this month, I got a chance to do just that with Chuck Joiner, the host of the MacVoices podcast. For the first time ever, Chuck did a double interview, killing two birds with one stone as he spoke to author Scott McNulty and I about WordPress. During the Interview, we talked about our separate WordPress-related projects and how they might be used together to help someone learn the ins and outs of using WordPress.

Here’s the blurb on the MacVoices Web site:

Thinking of starting a blog with WordPress? Maria Langer, the author of Self-Hosting a WordPress Site and WordPress.Com 2.7 Essential Training on Lynda.com and Scott McNulty, the author of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, share some tips from their respective projects to help you make the right choices. Maria and Scott talk about deciding on using WordPress.com or selecting your own host, one-click vs. user installs, why permalink structure is one of the first things you should think about, and finding and customizing a theme for your blog and more. Backup options, favorite plug-ins and why their video and book compliment each other are discussed.

If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can download it directly from its page on the MacVoices Web site.

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WordPress 2.7.1 has been released. This is a maintenance release and is recommended for all self-hosted WordPress users.

WordPress 2.7 users can use the automatic upgrade feature by visiting the Upgrade WordPress administration panel for their blog (Tools > Upgrade). As usual, you should back up your WordPress database before upgrading.

You can learn more on the WordPress 2.7.1 page on WordPress.org.

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Here are a few links of interest to the folks who read my books and articles or watch my training videos.

• TUAW Macworld 2009 Keynote Predictions – What the folks at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) think might happen at next week's Macworld Expo keynote.
• Apple market share tops 10%, Windows share lowest since tracking began – Interesting stats about computer platform distribution among users. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• 10 Resources for When You Need Help with CSS – A list of resources, with screenshots and links, for CSS information. Great for beginners. On Vandelay Website Design.
• 10 Killer WordPress Hacks – Excellent list with instructions and reference links to WordPress hacks for self-hosted WordPress users. On Smashing Magazine.
• FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter – If you follow me in Twitter but I don't follow you back, it could be for one of these reasons. On Mashable.com.
• How not to build a website – finding a website developer – Extremely good advice here. Thanks to @Jen4Web on Twitter for sharing the link. On WomenEntrepreneur.com.
• Macworld 2009 keynote liveblog – Mike T. Rose treats us to a live blog of the Keynote. Here's the final list of updates. Thanks tons, @MikeTRose! On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• The Twitter Applications Database – ANOTHER compilation of Twitter applications.
• Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard – Even some Mac users have to admit that this is pretty funny. On The Onion.
• Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs – The rumors of his impending death are greatly exaggerated. Again. On Apple.com.
• Twitter Yourself a Job – Tips from the Wall Street Journal for using Twitter as part of a job hunt strategy.
• Twitter be Nimble, Twitter be Quick, if you don’t know Jack, try these Twitter Tricks – A great introduction to Twitter for new users and power user wannbes. On TwiTip.com.
• WordPress Discussion Management: Enable or Disable Comments and Pingbacks via SQL – Great post that explains how to use MySQL commands to enable or disable comments and pingbacks. Also explains how you can periodically turn off comments and pingbacks on all posts based on date.
• Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7 – Great tutorial for WordPress 2.7 users, explaining how to separate pingbacks/trackbacks and comments in the comments area of a blog post. On Sivel.net.
• Introducing Tweetbacks Plugin for Wordpress – Excellent! A Tweetback plugin for WordPress users. This post includes a link to the plugin with complete instructions for WordPress 2.7 and earlier versions. On Smashing Magazine.
• CSS tips that every beginning developer should know – Great beginning CSS tutorial. On Arbenting.
• Tweetbacks, Copyright and Scraping – Another way of looking at Tweetbacks — one I never thought of. By Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, in the Blog Herald.
• Apple IQ Test – My score was dismal. I knew everything about Macs before 1995, but failed miserable on most questions dealing with facts after that. Could that indicate that I actually DO have a life? If you think you know Macs, try this test. On Infoworld.com. Thanks to @shepherdfx on Twitter for sharing the link.
• U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work – Incredible photos of today's crash taken moments afterward. So glad this one had a happy ending. On AlleyInsider.com.
• Hate the Player It’s Not a Game – Jeremy Tanner tells it like it is Re: Twitter spammers who call themselves gurus, mavens, etc.
• Twitter Support – Twitter help is now centralized in one place. Thanks to @mdy on Twitter for pointing this out.
• 7 Ways to Be Worth Following on Twitter – I really wish everyone who used Twitter would read this article and follow its advice. There would be a lot less noise online. On Twitip.com.
• Mac Automation: Creating Watch Me Do workflows – Good how-to piece for Automator users. On The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).
• How Not to be a Key Online Influencer – An example of how a self-labeled “key online influencer” can easily get cut down by the same social networking services he’s trying to promote — by the company he’s trying to promote them to. A lesson for anyone who blogs or tweets: when you say something publicly, ANYONE can read it. By David Henderson. Thanks to @SonoranDragon on Twitter for retweeting this link.
• Macintosh 25th Anniversary Reunion: Where Did Time Go? – Guy Kawasaki's tribute to the Mac's 25th birthday. Includes the complete introduction of the Mac, as well as the famous 1984 commercial. (Did you know that only appeared on TV as a commercial twice?) Thanks to @LeVitus for tweeting this one.
• I am popular on Twitter. Here’s why this means nothing. – And I thought I was the only one laughing at people bragging about their Twitter popularity stats. On ZDNet.com.
• The 100 Most Popular Twitter applications – The title says it all. On blending the mix.
• The Unforeseen Consequences of the Social Web – Sound advice for people who use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking services: what you put online might stay there for a very, very long time. On ReadWriteWeb. Thanks to @jodene on Twitter (where else?) for tweeting this link. Good reading.

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I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: WordPress.com 2.7 Essential Training.

From the official course description:

The blogging revolution has led to new levels of communication on the information superhighway. WordPress 2.7 Essential Training is the onramp for anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly and easily. Maria Langer, author and veteran blogger, shows how to set up a free WordPress account, create posts, and maintain a blog. She goes on to explore the possibilities WordPress offers for creating blogs that are unique in style and voice. Exercise files accompany the course.

Topics Include:
• Understanding the functionality of WordPress
• Composing and previewing pages
• Including images and multimedia files in posts
• Moderating comments and pingbacks
• Adding and managing user accounts
• Customizing with widgets

I want to add here that this material is also great basic instruction for self-hosted WordPress 2.7 users interested in learning the basics of blogging with WordPress. This course could be considered a “prerequisite” for my Self-Hosting a WordPress Site course, also on Lynda.com.

Remember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

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I’m extremely pleased to announce the release of my latest online training material for Lynda.com: Self-Hosting a WordPress Site.

From the official course description:

In Self-Hosting a WordPress Site, author and avid blogger Maria Langer shows how a blog can be customized to make it stand out in the digital crowd. Maria walks WordPress users—from casual bloggers to seasoned pros—through the steps to making a blog truly unique. This course goes beyond the basics, like setting a standard theme, and demonstrates such advanced techniques as incorporating CSS, PHP, and HTML.

Topics Include:
• Installing WordPress on any ISP
• Touring a WordPress CMS site
• Understanding all the content creation options
• Creating a customized look with PHP and CSS changes
• Using plug-ins to add features
• Setting options for user accounts

Remember: if you have a Lynda.com membership, you can view all of these videos — and any other video in the library — for free. You don’t pay per title; you pay by the month or year. This is an excellent value for anyone interested in learning lots of new software and topics without spending a fortune on books, one-on-one training, or training videos. Give it a try!

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One of the cool features of the Dashboard and administration panels in the current version of WordPress is its reminders of comments awaiting modification and plugins requiring update. You’ll see the reminders as numbers inside red circles. The one shown here, for example, is telling me that one of my installed plugins has an update available.

Clicking the Plugins button on the administration panel’s navigation bar displays the details. In this case, it’s a list of plugins, with a yellow bar indicating the available update:

If you’ve been following the posts about WordPress on this site, you might recall that I had a problem with this particular plugin, Landing Sites. In fact, I’d already updated it on my blog and discovered that the update didn’t work. So I’d reinstalled the older version. As a result, WordPress is no nagging me to update to a version I don’t want to use.

A stronger person would simply ignore the update flag. But why do that if you can turn the flag off for this plugin?

Here’s the trick.

1. Use WordPress’s built-in plugin editor to open the plugin file you don’t want to update for the current version.
2. Locate the line near the beginning that begins with the word Version: and includes the current version number. Here’s what it looks like for the plugin I’m hacking:
   
3. Replace the version number with the current version number. So, in this example, I’d replace 1.3 with 1.4.1.
4. You can then get a bit fancy and modify the Description area to note the real version number, just in case you forget. This information will appear on the Manage Plugins administration panel as a reminder. Here’s what my fully edited Description and Version look like:
   
5. Click the Update File button to save your changes.

If you did all of this right and didn’t edit something you shouldn’t have, WordPress will think you have the current version of the plugin installed and the reminder icon will go away. As shown here, the version number and description in the Manage Plugins administration panel will reflect your changes.

Best of all, if another update comes out, WordPress will still notify you about it.

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In the first part of this series, I explained what comments and pingbacks are and how they can benefit your blog. If you don’t know this stuff, go back and read that first. In this part of the series, I’ll explain how and why the comments feature can go wrong and list three tools for WordPress that can fight it.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

While your blog’s readers like the comments feature because it enables them to participate in your blog, spammers like it, too. It gives them the ability to share their spammy comments and links on your blog.

Comment spam is a terrible problem for bloggers. If left uncontrolled, it can quickly take over your blog by filling post comments with a lot of garbage — some of of obscene — including links to Web sites you probably don’t want to advertise for. Your blog visitors will have to wade through all this junk to find real comments. If the problem is bad enough, the probably won’t bother looking. If the comment spam is offensive enough, they might not visit your blog again.

Comment spam’s close cousin is pingback spam, which is relatively new to blogging. In pingback spam, someone else’s blog links back to yours, placing a pingback link to that blog in your blog. The purpose may be to get your site visitors to come to that blog, or, if you have nofollow disabled, to improve the site’s Google page rank.

Both comment spam and pingback spam can be automatically generated. For comment spam, spambot programs can automatically find comment forms on a blog, fill in the fields, and submit the spam comments. Pingback spam can be created through the use of feed “scraping” tools that pull parts of posts from your blog and posts them to the spammer’s blog, along with a link to yours. Because of automation, so there’s no limit to how much spam can be sent to your blog.

Spam Stopping Tools

Fortunately, there’s help. Many WordPress programmers are out there, fighting the same war against spam that you are. They have the skills to write plugins that can identify spam and quarantine or delete it so it doesn’t appear on your blog.

While there are numerous spam prevention tools out there for WordPress users, I have personal experience with three of them:

• Aksimet, which is part of WordPress.com and comes as a plugin with self-hosted WordPress blogs, is created and maintained by the folks at Automattic, makers of WordPress. It’s fully integrated into WordPress and is extremely effective. I tell you more about how to set up and use Akismet in Part III of this series.

Spam Karma, by Dr. Dave, is another powerful spam prevention tool. I used this exclusively for a while and it caught all the spam that appeared on my site. The only reason I stopped using it is because I switched to Akismet.

• Bad Behavior is a plugin by Michael Hampton. It attempts to head off spam by determining whether a hit to a blog post is by a human or a spambot. Spambots are automatically denied access. One side benefit of this approach is a reduction in MySQL activity due to spambot access — that’s why I initially began using it. I used Bad Behavior in conjunction with one of the other spam prevention tools listed here for some time before trusting Akismet to do the whole job. The reason: Bad Behavior sometimes records false positives, making it impossible for certain real people to post comments. This problem occurs rarely, but since Akismet seems to be doing the job on its own, I prefer not to take the chance. (Note to Michael if you stop by to read this: if I got this wrong, please do comment to set me straight.)

I should note here that both Akismet and Spam Karma can “learn” about spam based on how you resolve comments you manually moderate. That’s why it’s important to properly identify any false positives or missed spam.

In the next post of this series, I’ll explain how you can configure Akismet on your WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress 2.7 blog.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

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Way back in 2006, I wrote an article titled “Reader Engagement Site Improvements.” In it, I detailed a number of plugins I’d installed to help keep visitors around a while longer, looking at new content on my site.

One of these plugins is called Landing Sites. Its job is to check to see if a visitor has arrived (or “landed”) on your blog from a search engine it knows. If it has, it displays a custom message with links to possibly related posts. The idea is that if a visitor has come to your site because he was searching for something, maybe one of your other related posts might meet his needs. Here’s what it looks like on my blog, with some customization.

I used the plugin on both my main blog, An Eclectic Mind, and this Maria’s Guides site. It worked like a charm. My blog was even commended by another blogger for the use of this feature. (Wish I could find the link, but I can’t. Sorry.)

Then, I made a fatal error. When WordPress notified me that the Landing Sites plugin had been updated from version 1.3 to 1.4.1, I allowed it to automatically install the update. I didn’t realize until I updated my blog to WordPress 2.7 and changed the theme that Landing Sites had stopped working. Instead of showing a list of related posts, it was show some raw and ugly PHP code.

I figured the problem was with WordPress 2.7, so I just disabled it on my blog. I posted a comment in a WordPress.org support thread and waited for a response. The author of the plugin subsequently posted instructions for a fix, but it didn’t work for me or for others.

Today, Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress fame) e-mailed me to point out that the plugin wasn’t working on this site. (I admit it: I’m lazy and still have this site set up on WordPress 2.6.5.) That surprised me. I went into action, beginning the troubleshooting process.

No fix worked. But I was able to track down the old version of the plugin. I disabled the current version and deleted it. Then I reinstalled the old version (1.3) and activated it. The result: problem solved.

I then went to my blog, which is running WordPress 2.7, and installed the old version there. As you can see from the screenshot above, it works.

What does this mean to self-hosted WordPress users? Unfortunately, it means that plugin updates don’t always make things work better — or even right. In this instance, the plugin author “broke” the plugin by trying to fix it and releasing an update. I don’t know if the new version works for everyone else, but I know it doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m just glad that reinstalling the old version fixed the problem.

I like the plugin and am glad to have it fully functional on my blogs.

A big thanks to Lorelle for contacting me when she found the problem. Since I never reach my blogs via a search engine, I probably never would have found the problem on my own.

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One of the main things that differentiate a blog from a Web site is the ability of readers to interact with what you post. This is done primarily through the use of comments.

Comment Basics

Most blogging software supports reader commenting. Typically, a comment form appears at the bottom of a post. Readers can enter their comments about the post, along with their name, e-mail address, and Web or blog URL. When the form is submitted, the comment is added to the post.

The screenshot here shows what a post on my blog, An Eclectic Mind, looks like with a few comments added, as well as a comment form.

Most blogging software packages offer the blogger options for handling comments. WordPress, for example offers several options:

• Comments can be enabled or disabled by default or set on a post-by-post basis.
• Commenter e-mail address can be required for a comment to be submitted.
• Blog registration can be required for a comment to be submitted.
• Comments can be held for moderation or automatically moderated based on a handful of options, including moderation and blacklist words or phrases.

Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Pingbacks (or trackbacks) are part of the commenting arena. A pingback happens when another blogger writes a post in which he links directly back to your post. He may have quoted your post in his and is linking back to the source. Or maybe he just wants to tell his readers how good your post was and send them over to your blog to read it. If his blogging software supports pingbacks or he has manually entered the link as a trackback, a special comment is sent to your blog with a link back to his blog.

Technically, a trackback is different from a pingback. A pingback is automated. The other blogger’s blogging platform must be capable of creating the pingback comment. Before automated pingbacks were widely supported, blogging platforms included a trackback feature that required the blogger to manually enter a linked post’s URL in a field when creating his post. Nowadays, these two terms are often used interchangeably.

In WordPress, you must have pingbacks enabled for your blog posts in order for WordPress to receive them. Pingbacks can appear with comments or, if the blog’s theme separates comments from pingbacks, they can appear separately. For example, my blog’s theme separates comments and pingbacks under different “tabs.”

Pingbacks look different, too. Instead of including a blogger’s name and comment, they include the name of the post that links to your post and a short excerpt surrounded by [...] characters. Here’s what a pingback looks like on a post in this blog:

Comments, Pingbacks, and Reader Participation

It’s pretty easy to see how comments encourage reader participation. Comments give readers an opportunity to add or respond to your post. If enough readers comment and you respond, a conversation gets started. Sometimes that conversation can have more value than your original post.

For example, one of the most popular posts on this site is about a change in iTunes that affected how podcasts play back on an iPod. I identified the problem and created a workaround. A bunch of readers commented. One of the readers commented by sharing an AppleScript he’d written to automate my workaround. Another reader fine-tuned that script so it ran more efficiently. To this day, I use that script as my workaround. You can see the post and read the comments here.

Pingbacks also encourage reader participation, but in a less direct way. Suppose you read this post and think that your readers might benefit from it. You write a post on your blog that refers to it and adds your own comments. When you link to this post from your blog, a link to your post appears on this post. So readers reading comments here can go to your post to see what you’ve written about this topic.

Unfortunately, not everyone uses comments and pingbacks as they’re intended. The result is comment and pingback spam. I’ll discuss those in the next post of this series.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

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Contrary to popular belief, most blogs are copyrighted. As a result, most blog themes include a copyright notice in the footer.

How the copyright notice is entered into the theme determines how it appears:

• If entered as plain text, it appears as a static date or range of dates — whatever you entered. This means that each new year — right about now — you need to change the static text to include the current year.
• If entered using tags that pull the most recent date’s year from your WordPress blog — or just use the current year — a range of dates may not appear at all. Instead, there will be just one date. That’s better, but not exactly accurate.
• If entered using PHP tags that get the first and last years of blog posts and put them in a range — you never have to modify the footer to change the dates and they always include the entire range of post years. This is the best solution and it isn’t difficult to do.

To automatically display a range of dates from the year of your first post to your most recent post in a copyright notice, just edit the code in the footer to remove your current copyright notice code and replace it with this:

Copyright © 2004-2009Maria's Guides

The result, on this blog, would be something like:

Copyright © 2004-2009 Maria's Guides

If you prefer to have your name appear instead of the name of your blog, replace the last line with your name. That’s what I do.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

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• The Simpsons mocks (m)Apple – Article with embedded YouTube clips about the recent Simpsons episode that mocks Apple, Inc. On Engadget.
• 60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages – This will make you laugh. On Hongkiat.com/blog.
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• MacJury » Blog Archive » MacJury #831: Analysis of Apple’s Announcements and the Future of Macworld Expo – No Steve Jobs keynote and Apple's qutting Macworld Expo after this year. The Mac Jurists discuss in this podcast episode of The Mac Jury.
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If you use WordPress widgets on your self-hosted WordPress blog, you may not be fully satisfied with the way the Tag Cloud widget looks and works on your site. I know I wasn’t. The maximum font size was too large for the most commonly used tag (helicopters, on my blog) to fit into the column in which I’d put it. Since I wanted my tag cloud in the narrow column in which it resided, I had to make a change.

The answer is to modify the wp_tag_cloud function in the category-template.php file. It’s remarkably easy to do. Here’s how.

1. Open the file /wp-includes/category-template.php.
2. Scroll down to the line that begins function wp_tag_cloud. If you’re using WordPress 2.7 and haven’t made any other changes to this file, you should find it at line 552. (You can always do a search for it; I found the general area by searching for “tag cloud.”)
3. Make changes in the array as follows:
   
   • To specify the smallest font size, set the value after ’smallest’. The default is 8 points.
   • To specify the largest font size, set the value after ‘largest’. The default size is 22 points.
   • To specify the maximum number of tags included in the cloud, set the value after ‘number’. The default number of tags is 45.

   I changed my settings to 6, 16, and 75 respectively. You can see the results in the screenshot here, as well as in the sidebar for my blog, An Eclectic Mind.

4. Overwrite the existing file with the changed file.

When you reload a page that uses the Tag Cloud widget, your changes should appear immediately.

Keep in mind that if WordPress is updated and the file you changed is replaced, you may have to repeat these steps to reset your defaults.

Learn More

Learn more about working with a self-hosted WordPress 2.7 installation — or WordPress.com. Check out my WordPress courses on Lynda.com.

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