WordPress - NoFollow - I’m Now Following
August 1st, 2007 by Stephen Cronin (1,176 views)In my last post, Should I Follow?, I decided that I would disable the nofollow tag. I’ve now done this and have joined the Bumpzee No Nofollow | I Follow | DoFollow Community.
In the end, I opted for the Dofollow (WP Plugin) as listed on Andy Beard’s review (Note, this is not the original DoFollow plugin).
The main reason I chose this plugin is because you can specify a delay before the nofollow tag is turned off. I’ve set this to 2 days, which gives me a couple of days to prune spam comments before they get any link love.
Speaking of spam, I’ve have been warned by Chris, Terence Chang and Vegan Momma, in the comments of my last post. At the moment, my levels of spam are minimal (one or two a day), but I know this is likely to change.
I am looking at a couple of Math plugins to ensure that commenters are human (and not an automated bot). I am not sure which one I will use yet as the one I originally chose works on my local site, but not on my live site.
I’m not using Askimet, as apparantly it chews up the odd geniune comment (I need all the comments I can get at the moment!). I may look at SpamKarma, but probably not until the level of spam increases significantly.
Yes, if you’ve been reading carefully, you’ll have noticed that I’m completely unprotected right now, except for the built in WordPress spam protection! Not for much longer though.
If you have any tips about spam protection, feel free to throw them my way. I have a feeling I’ll be needing them.
Tags: dofollow, spam, wordpress plugins
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Welcome aboard. I did it about a month ago myself.
Unlike some of the previous commentors (all of whom I read the blogs of) I haven’t had much trouble with spam so far. In fact I got one, from the buy blog comments guy.
I see it this way now. We just got a new car, it’s a Ford XR5 Turbo. It’s a quick beast of a vehicle. Sometimes when you’re in the overtaking lane coming up behind a slower car and you can see the sign that the lane is about to end, you have to make a decision - do I overtake, or do I merge in behind this slower vehicle. My other half drives the car, and I often say to him when I see him hesitating - you have to decide now! Overtake or not?
I think the same goes for comments. You have to make a decision one way or the other. To either let everyone have their links, delete the really obvious spam and the ones that make you feel like you need to take a bath, and feel ok about it, or to worry over every single comment - was that one legit? was that person for real or just here to get a link?
If you find it annoying you or eating you up or you spend more time thinking about the comments than the blogging, it might be better to go back to no follow later. There’s nothing wrong with doing that - we all have to choose what is best for us.
Glad you joined the community, I really enjoy finding new blogs through it, I read it on the RSS feed, it’s fantastic.
Snoskred,
thanks for your comments. I’m the kind of guy who normally overtakes. I think I’ll do as you say - let everyone have their links, then delete the obvious spam.
In the last post, Chris, Terence and I talked about having a good comment policy. I need to get that in place. It will warn users that I’ll delete comments at my discretion - then I won’t loose any sleep if I delete borderline comments!
I’ve been enjoying the community too (via RSS) and finding new blogs through it. By the way, I checked out your site and it looks great - made me feel homesick (I’m Australian, but have been living overseas for most of the last ten years).
Hi Stephen,
I wanted to stop by and thank-you for letting me know about the Google update. Did you change back to the no follow? I also belong to the same group you joined at Bumpzee. If you have the search status plug-in you can automatically see which links are no follow. I think that is pretty cool. Take care and thanks…Jude
Hi Judy,
Thanks for your comment. No I haven’t changed back to nofollow, but there is a two day delay on it being turned off. So right now it will look like no follow is still turned on, but in about a day and a half, it will be turned off for your comment.
The delay is simply to give me time to catch the spam and get rid of them.
I’ll have to check out the search status plugin - sounds very useful. Thanks!
Judy,
I just got the Search Status Firefox extension and it seems great. I like some of its other features as well, not just the nofollow links one. Thanks again.
Hey Stephen,
I use Akismet and I can always check to see the spam they catch and de-spam it if I think it is legit and as far as I know I have never have any real comments caught, but I can’t say the same for the bad behavior plug-in they never let me see what they have blocked and it tells me they have blocked a lot. Take care….Jude
Hi Stephen,
Welcome to the “dofollow” movement.
I posted a reply to your earlier comment on my 640×480 post, just to let you know.
Hi,
Welcome to the Do Follow List!
There are around 260 websites here awaiting for your comments!
Regards,
Nick
P.S. Any link back will be much appreciated and it will bring you a do-follow link on the list!
Hi Nick,
Thanks for adding me to the list. You’ve already got a link back from your comment above, but I’ll write up the D-List in a post in the near future. Can’t promise when, so for the moment I’ve just stumbled the D-List.
Hi
I’m getting about half my comments flagged as spam by Akismet. Yeah I can go in and approve them later but its annoying for readers to see their comments disappear. I like the look of the Maths Comment Spam Protection you have here and will try it on my site. I like your site Stephen and thanks for dropping by and letting me know about the permalinks problem on mine!
Hi Janet,
The maths plugin chops out all the automated spam, which was most of what I was getting. If humans leave spam you need something like Askimet to pick it up, or you can always check the comments manually.
You’re right - It’s annoying for readers to lose their comments. It doesn’t happen that often for me - maybe twice a week, but that’s too much. I don’t have many readers, so I don’t want to lose them because of this! I am thinking of disabling Askimet again…
I have considered joining the dofollow resolution but spam is a big worry for me. I suppose if you can stop the automated spam it is a start.
Marc, it’s been a while since I wrote the last comment here.
These days I use a combination of the Simple Trackback Validation plugin (to stop the mountains of trackback spam), Math Comment Spam Protection (to stop the bots), and Askimet to clean up what’s left. I only get a couple a week now.
It’s not a problem - for me at least…
That’s great that you removed the nofollow! Good for you helping out your fellow bloggers. I was wondering where you got your mathematical spam protection? I use a captcha, and don’t really like it (too hard to read sometimes)…
Ty,
I use the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin. It’s been great for me. I think it’s much easier than the traditional captchas…
Instead of the math check, which is mildly intrusive to users, what do you think of the new “invisible” spam catchers, besides Aksimet? I have been playing with the recent spam-stopper plugins that catch automatic posters that don’t use a browser (the script won’t allow a post without running a Javascript check).
Also, which plugin do you use that allows users to choose who they are replying to? That is pretty handy.
Hi Tee,
As I said to Ty, the Math captcha has been great for me. However, I have noticed a couple of new spam plugins that don’t need any user input, such as Cookies For Comments and WordPress Spam Blocker. Are these the plugins you’ve been trying? How did they go?
I like the idea - although I’m always a little conscious of excluding people with JavaScript or cookies turned off. I know not many people will have them turned off these days, but still… There’s also Simple Spam Filter as another alternative, that doesn’t rely on cookies or JavaScript, although it may not catch all bots.
Anyway, I may consider moving to one of the above, as it is easier on commentators, but I don’t have enough time to reply to comments at the moment, let alone test new plugins!
The reply plugin is the Yet another threaded Comments plugin although I’ve edited it a little bit to tie into my theme better. I’m really liking it!