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Last year I got wind of the release of Google Voice. Google Voice provides you with a phone number that you can use for phone calls (forwarded to another number of your choice), voicemail, SMS to email, and more. As soon as I heard about Google Voice and learned that it was free, the first thing I did was sign up. Why? Well, all domain registrars require that you have a valid telephone number listed in your domain’s whois information. I didn’t want to use my home, so at the time I used an old cellular number (that was disconnected, heh). You can see where this is going… I registered a Google Voice number so I’d have an anonymous, no-worries-about-spammy-phone-calls phone number. Now I can rest easy knowing that I have a valid phone number listed as a point of contact for all of my domain names, without worrying about getting calls about diet supplements that work and god knows what else.
And you know what? It works perfectly. I would definitely recommend using Google Voice! 
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What is up with all of the damn spam lately? It really seems like it has gone from a handful of comments a day to dozens and even hundreds. What I want to know is, WHY? What changed with search engines or the blogosphere to encourage these spammers to come out in ridiculous droves? In any case, my killer set of plugins (see WordPress plugin: Comment Timeout) keeps all but a few at bay, so I can deal. I suppose.
And is it just me, or is all spam about sex, weight, pronexin and other diet pill reviews, and money? We’re not happy unless we’re getting laid, looking good, and rolling in the dough. I agree that all of those things are quite nice, but being happy, being loved, having hobbies and interests and family and friends also contributes to our overall emotional state, don’t you think?
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Lately I have been getting a lot of spam. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. And it’s not like I’m not accustomed to spam. Sadly, I am. But we’re talking hundreds of comments per day per blog. And that’s despite me using Akismet, Sparm Karma 2, and Math Comment Spam Protection. After a few days of deleting thousands of spam comments from all of my blogs combined, it dawned on me: instead of being reactive, I should be proactive. Why delete thousands of spammy comments about anti wrinkle treatment if I can prevent the comments from being left in the first place?
So after searching around, I downloaded and installed Comment Timeout. Comment Timeout is a simple plugin that allows you to specify, on a global base, that comments should be closed after X amount of days. A small options area is also added to the Add New Post page, in case you want to leave comments open longer on a particular post. You can set different options for trackbacks as well.
So far, the plugin is working great. I have noticed a definite decrease in spam, and that always makes my day!
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A lot of bloggers use social networks as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Additionally, these and other bloggers use social networks to promote new blog posts. I’m one of those bloggers, and if you’re reading this, perhaps you are too. You can manually update your social network status to reflect a new blog entry, or you can use plugins that update just a particular social network. Or, you can get yourself a copy of the fabulous CR Post to Ping.fm and allow it — and Ping.fm — to update all of your connected social networks for you.
CR Post to Ping.fm sends a new blog entry notification (the exact notification is 100% customizable) to Ping.fm, who in turn distributes it to any social networks you have connected to your Ping.fm account. The plugin allows you to specify the categories in which new posts will trigger notifications. You can choose all, or specify the categories you want to include notifications for, or categories that you would like to exclude notifications for. This is handy if you participate in paid blogging, don’t want to start a war as a result of an opinionated post on the electronic cigarette, or simply don’t want to update your social networks every single time you hit the Publish button.
CR Post to Ping.fm is incredibly easy to install, and simply requires you to input your Ping.fm application key in order to get started.
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Feel free to ignore this post, it’s just for Technorati. Y6C4A2EW7UPD
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I currently have a T-Mobile myTouch 3G. It’s my second Android-powered phone (my first was the lovely but bulky T-Mobile G1). And now there’s the T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide. Oh yes. It has a slide-out keyboard, just like the G1. That’s the one thing about my G1 that I SERIOUSLY miss. For the record, I only “upgraded” to a myTouch because my G1′s call button broke (so I couldn’t answer incoming calls), and T-Mobile’s stupid promos made it over $100 cheaper for me to get the myTouch instead of another G1. Even online coupons couldn’t bring down the price of the G1, so I gave up a keyboard in exchange for saving a few bucks (well, more than a few…).
QWERTY keyboard, how I miss thee. Don’t get me wrong, the touch screen on the myTouch is quite intuitive and responsive, and Swype makes everything so much easier, but there’s nothing like a physical keyboard!
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I joke about having carpal tunnel syndrome, but I’m 99 certain that I’m at the very least developing it. How can someone work with computers 8-12 hours per day, every day, year round, for years on end, and eventually not develop it? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if our generation (20-somethings) manages to set some kind of world record as far as documented cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. Between the typing/texting/touching we do with computers, phones, MP3 players, and other devices, we’re constantly abusing and overworking our poor wrists!
Speaking of which, my mom has/had it, and she had both of her wrists operated on for it back in 2004 and 2005. I took her to both surgeries and stayed with her for a few days afterward each time. She said the recovery wasn’t too bad, though she was definitely sore and tender for a few weeks. But hey, seeing as how I’ve been through childbirth, a c-section, and gastric bypass surgery, I can’t imagine not being able to handle some minor cuts to my wrist and hand!
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Tonight I spent quite a bit of time upgrading WordPress and an assortment of plugins on about 45 WordPress-powered blogs. Yes, that is a lot of blogs. The subjects on the blogs vary from office furniture supplies to wedding favors to online shopping to baby shower invitations to cooking to general topics. There’s definitely a lot going on with these blogs. The upgrading isn’t too bad, though at the same time it’s a royal pain. It’s a lot of clicking and navigating, really, but it can be both tedious and tiresome! I swear I’m getting a case of carpal tunnel right about now. My right wrist is not too happy with me.
I wish there was some type of WP feature (or a plugin, haha) that would enable plugins to upgrade themselves. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
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By default WordPress allows you to display an extremely customizable list of blogroll links in your blog’s sidebar. But what if you want to display links on a separate page? Manually coding in links is redundant and inefficient, but WordPress disables PHP coding on posts and pages. Fortunately, there are two workarounds:
First, there’s a plugin called WP Render Blogroll Links which will quickly and easily allow you to make a customizable links on a page or post (yes, post) of your choice.
Or, you can do things the hard-coded route and create a page and an accompanying template file to display your links with. For this method, you’ll need to create a new document and title it links.php. Here’s how mine is set up (note: you can copy and modify index.php or even page.php to get a “base” for your links page):
‹?php
/*
Template Name: Links
Author: Jenn
Author Email: x@jenn.nu
Author URL: http://www.jenn.nu
*/
?›‹?php get_header(); ?›
‹h2›‹?php the_title(); ?›‹/h2›‹br /›
‹p›
‹strong›Links‹/strong›‹br /›
‹?php wp_list_bookmarks(‘title_li=&categorize=0&category=0&before=&after=‹br /›&show_images=0&between= of &show_description=0&orderby=name’); ?›
‹/p›‹?php get_footer(); ?›
The important part is Template Name: Links. This makes your new template file easily recognizable and listed within the Admin Dashboard.
Save the file as links.php, then upload to your current theme’s folder.
Now, login to your dashboard, create a new page, title it “Links”, and select the links.php template file you just made as the template for the page.
Congrats — your links page should work like a charm!
P.S. Check out the wp_list_bookmarks page on the WordPress Codex to determine what parameters to use to display links as you see fit.
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I came across the coolest WordPress plugin today: Render Blogroll Links. It allows you to create a post or page of bookmarks from your WordPress blogroll in one easy step. Typically creating a page for blogroll links entails creating a template page that has the necessary PHP functions on it, then creating a page and pointing it to that links.php template. Not difficult, but definitely time consuming. If you have multiple blogs to set up with pages for blogroll links, or you don’t want to be hassled with managing more template files, then this plugin is for you!
How does it work? Simply install, and plop on whatever page you’d like to display blogroll links are. Check out the included documentation (also listed on the Render Blogroll Links page made in your admin dashboard upon plugin activation) for how to tweak what types of links are displayed and how they’re displayed. One great tweak is the ability to include or exclude specific categories. This means having the capability of displaying all of your links, or maybe keeping links like baby shower favors and baby shower themes separate.
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