Blogging

• The Five Worst Ways to Title a Blog Post
• Is Creative Commons Right for Your Blog?
• Should Bloggers be involved in Unethical Marketing?
• How to Craft the Perfect “About” Page for Your Blog

WordPress

• The TimThumb Saga
• TimThumb Security Flaw, Akismet-HubSpot integration & Varnish+Apache+WordPress
• WordPress Shortcode: Display a Thumbnail of Any Website
• How to Customize the Display of WordPress Archives in Your Sidebar

SEO

• How to Pick a Domain Name for Your Local Business
• SEO Metrics You Must Track and Report
• 4 Tips for Hiring an SEO Firm
• Do You Know These SEO Social Secrets?

Social Media

• Social Media and Search Engine Optimization: Why They Work Together
• Social Media Pitfalls
• The Social Media Map
• Please Tell Me Why I Should Like, Follow, +1 You?

Technology

• Computers Could Grade Essay Tests Better Than Profs
• Technology Blamed For Helping UK Rioters
• DHS Creating Database of Secret Watchlists
• The London Riots and Facial Recognition Technology

Gadgets

• Sony ESSP-2000 Battery and UPS
• Tokyoflash’s Kisai 3D Unlimited Watch
• Panasonic DY-PS10 Pocket Server
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M71z All-In-One Desktop

Pinoy Blogs

• NFC Demo with the Nokia C7 at the Jump Store in Megamall
• TDK IE-500 In-Ear Headphones Review
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Philippines : Price, Specs, Hands-on Video, Quick Review
• Twitter Adds New Reply Feature

JaypeeOnline Weekly Recap

• HowTo: Enable the W3TC Google Page Speed Report WordPress Dashboard Widget
• BonPress – Free Tumblr-Like WordPress Theme
• State of the Internet 2011 [Infographic]

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or would want to share your article or any interesting story that you found in the Internet and have it featured in the next Weekend Roundup, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message via the contact page.

Yesterday, Akismet reached a milestone – catching its 25 billionth spam comment. To celebrate this milestone, the folks from Akismet has built a minisite called 25 Billion Pieces of Spam. The site features a live counter of the total amount of spam that Akismet has caught, information on how Akismet works, the different types of spam or threal levels and last but not least, a mini Asteroids-like flash game.

Caught spam live counter

How Akismet works

Threat levels

Akismet Asteroids mini flash game

Btw, these days Akismet detects spam comments at the rate of about 40 million comments per day. Here’s some additional information or trivia regarding spam and spammers according to Akismet records:

• Spammers are busiest on Friday at 20:00 GMT.
• Spammers are least active on Sundays at 14:00 GMT. (Do spammers go to church?!)
• A blog comment is 8% more likely to be spam on a Saturday morning than it is on a Tuesday evening.

If you’re curious to know which was the 25 billionth spam comment caught by Akismet? Check out the image below:

The comment was made on the Harrisonburg Community News Network.

Do you use Akismet as your antispam plugin/solution? What do you like/dislike about Akismet? If you don’t use Akismet, what plugin/tool do you use to fight and keep off spam comments from your blog or website? Please share your thoughts.

Two days ago, the WordPress dev team released WordPress 3.0.5 which is a security hardening update that includes security enhancements like improved security of any plugins that didn’t properly leverage security API, additional in-depth defense against vulnerabilities, fix for a information disclosure issue that could’ve allowed author-level users to view content of drafts & private posts and a bug fix for an issue that could’ve allowed contributor or author-level users to gain further access to the website/blog.

WordPress 3.0.5 did its job of fixing the security issues and bugs but it also created a small glitch that stripped advanced HTML from comments. Here’s Mark Jaquith’s explanation about the WordPress 3.0.5 bug.

One of the security fixes for WordPress 3.0.5 was overzealous. It fixed the issue, but it also stripped advanced HTML (on display, not save, thankfully) from comments by people with the unfiltered_html capability. It’s sort of a rare bug — doesn’t apply to multisite installs, and not many people know that Editors and Administrators on single WP installs can use images etc in comments, so we don’t think it warrants another release.

To address/fix this issue, the Akismet team included the hotfix with the release of Akismet 2.5.3. If you’re not using Akismet, you can use the newly created plugin called Hotfix that fixes the WordPress 3.0.5 bug. You might want to keep this plugin for future use as it is designed to fix selected bugs that might come with future versions of WordPress.

Still haven’t upgraded to WordPress 3.0.5? Common now! It only takes a few minutes of your time and it will save you a ton of headaches and problems. Better safe than sorry folks!

You can download WordPress 3.0.5 manually from WordPress.org or do it automatically via the WordPress admin panel – Dashboard > Updates. If you do upgrade your WordPress installation, don’t forget to download the latest version of Akismet or the Hotfix plugin so you won’t get bitten by the WordPress 3.0.5 bug.

Anybody here who’s already upgraded to WordPress 3.0.5? Anyone had issues with the WordPress 3.0.5 bug?

Was checking my WordPress dashboard earlier today when I saw a notification for a plugin update. When I checked on the Plugins page, I saw that it was an update for a newer version of Akismet, version 2.2.1. I did the upgrade via the automatic (one-click) upgrade feature of WordPress.

After the upgrade process was over I went back to the main page and I noticed that there was a new tab that says “Akismet Stats“.

Akismet stats track your comment metrics, including missed spam, false positives (Akismet thought it was spam, but you disagreed), and Yummy Pie, which displays your ham vs. spam count in a nifty pie chart.

When I clicked on the tab, I was surprised to see that Akismet now has a dedicated page to display graphs of spam comments, ham comments, missed spam and false positives and also includes a pie chart showing the percentage of spam and ham (legit) comments. Aside from that, there is also a table located below the graphs that display the historical statistics for spam, ham, missed spam and false positives divided into monthly numbers.

Additional screenshots:

Ham comments graph

Historical Statistics table

My Take:
Other WordPress users may find the Akismet Stats feature useful but personally, I don’t have any use or need for it. Why? Because I don’t see what this new feature can do to help me better manage my comments and fight spam. I love Akismet and what it does to keep my blog spam-free, but this new feature is something I can live without. For now, all I need is to be able to check the spam queue for ham (legit) comments and be able to retrieve them. That’s unless the folks from Automattic comes up with new features for Akismet that will help WordPress users in improving comment management and battling spam.

What about you guys? What do you think of this new feature added to Akismet? Do you or would you actually use it and check statistics for spam or ham comments? Please share your thoughts and thanks for your time!

Because of the 3 month long hiatus, I wasn’t able to do much with my blog except for approving comments. Spam comments have piled up and numbered at the thousands. No matter how much spam comments I have, I always make it a habit/practice to check the spam queue for valid comments. When I was done going through the list, I clicked on the Delete All button and waited for the spam comments to disappear. It was taking quite a while to finish and at first I thought it was taking long because of the large amount of spam comments I had but when I saw that the browser stopped loading and the spam comments were still there I knew something was wrong. Anyways, I tried doing it again and ended up repeating the process like three times to no avail.

The next thing I did was to do a Google search for “akismet can’t delete spam” and found this entry at the WordPress support forums. It turns out that the current version I was using, 2.1.7 had a bug – the Delete All option didn’t work, a bug that is specific to this version of Akismet. Previously, the only way to fix it was to revert to an earlier version, Akismet 2.1.6. Shortly after the bug was found, the folks over at Automattic released a newer version – Akismet 2.1.8 which fixed the bug. After reading this I immediately upgraded Akismet, went to my spam queue, clicked on the Delete All button and VIOLA!, all the spam comments disappeared.

In case you’re experiencing the same problem with “un-deleteable spam comments” or if you’re still running an older version of Akismet and plan to do an upgrade make sure you upgrade to the latest version which is Akismet 2.1.8 to fix/avoid this bug.