How To Blog

Hey! Wasn't WordPress 1.5.2 supposed to have FASTER posting times???

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So I finally installed WP 1.5.2 over at a blog that I’m starting about DIY Pool Maintenance.  The release notes say that one of the bugs fixed in this version is slow posting times from when a post is held up by a ping that’s taking a long time.  The post was supposed to be seperated from the pinging process.

Right?  Isn’t that what you took it to mean in fix for long post times – move pings to shutdown?

Well, holy cow is it taking a long time for my posts to finish saving. 

I edited the post a couple times and even changed where I was pinging, but damn if it didn’t take a looooooooooong time to post. 

So long that I started it inspired me to write this TypePad post and I got as far as ‘holy cow’ before WP finished posting my post.  What the?  Instead of posting faster, it seems slower to me.  Anyone else experiencing this with the latest version of WordPress?

Need someone to create a custom template or plugin for your blog? Need help with SEO? Check out Rent A Coder!

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I just found the coolest resource!  It’s called Rent A Coder, and you can post any project that you need help with, whether it be as simple as installing WordPress / MovableType / etc for you on your server, or as complex as asking someone to write a custom blogging platform for you.  Want a custom template for TypePad or a special WordPress theme and don’t have the time or skills to do it yourself?  Just Rent A Coder to do it for you.  You can even find people to help you with Search Engine Optimization, people to write content for you, etc.

Once you post the specifics of the project you need help with, coders will then bid on your ‘job’ and you can decide who you want to hire based on their bid, the feedback they received from other users on other projects they’ve completed, etc.

From their website:

Need a coder to help you create the next 'killer app' or answer questions?  Just post your program or question here and coders from around the world will email you bids on doing the work.

    You can review each bidder's resume and reputation online, and when you're ready to make your decision, you can rent  your personal, expert, coder with just a few clicks! Its that simple!


     Posting a bid request is free, and you are under no obligation to accept any bids sent to you unless you choose to.   Once you accept a bid, you will place your payment into escrow. The money is not released to the coder, till they complete the work according to your original specification. There are no service charges or finders fees for buyers.

On the flip side, got skills?  Flaunt ‘em and earn cash!

Looking to earn extra income using your hard-won technical skills?  Rent a Coder lets you locate and bid on coding projects and questions from around the world!  By completing a free registration, you can publicize your skills on the online resume system and receive emails as new bid requests come in.

So those of you who are creating all those great free themes and plug-ins (which I hope you’ll continue to offer for the sake of the blogging community), you may wanna consider listing your talents at Rent A Coder and earning some extra $$ through freelancing. 

I just did.

New Version of WordPress is out - time to update to v1.5.2

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It’s time to upgrade again — WordPress 1.5.2 is out.

While I’m getting awfully tired of having to keep manually updating all of the WordPress blogs that I maintain, this update has some bug fixes that make me really psyched that it was released. 

Blogging with WP will now be even faster, as they have made post times superfast regardless of where you’re sending pings to. 

Previously, if you were pinging a large list of ping services as is recommended here, it could take a long time for the post to finish getting posted, mainly b/c it was so busy pinging and waiting for responses from the ping servers – now WP sends pings and trackbacks behind the scenes, so you can get back to blogging right away, even if there’s a holdup on one of the ping servers.  Very cool!

There are also security fixes again (*ahem*) so it’s probably a good idea to upgrade, no matter what.

TypePad sporting new features and enhancements including Podcasting support, easier sidebar editing, and more

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The Six Apart team continues to improve on their already great blogging platform in the latest update to TypePad!

Additions and enhancements include:

• support for Podcasting so your blog can ‘be seen and heard’
• the option to choose which photo albums you want to display on your blog (instead of having them all be available vs none)
• the ability to publish XML feeds in your sidebar
• a new “Gourmet” theme designed for the many ‘foodies’ that love to blog about their passion
• A new form of TypeList called the Notes TypeList which makes it easier to add HTML content to the sidebar
• Pro users can now have income from Kanoodle text ads pay for their blog automatically with ‘Auto-Pay’

Thanks, Six Apart!  Keep up the good work!  (But please do some major work on spam filtering soon!  I want to turn trackbacks back on in my blogs – I miss the legit trackback pings )

Trackback spam a nightmare for TypePad users, while WordPress anti-spam filters and plugins make for smooth sailing

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That’s it – I’ve had it!  Even though SixApart introduced comment and trackback moderation for TypePad, it still does not diminish the termendous amount of work I stilll need to do sorting through legitmate trackbacks amongst the hoards of trackback spam.  Effective immediately, I am now turning off trackback functionality on all of my TypePad blogs and you can thank the spammers for it.

This brings TypePad’s usefulness as a blogging platform down for me, as I consider TrackBacks to be an critical feature of blogging and connecting the strands of the blogosphere.

As I’ve mentioned before, handling trackback and comment spam is where WordPress really blows the competition away.  WordPress is smarter than TypePad in recognizing spam and filtering it into a seperate queue for moderation, where I can scan through the hoard and do a ‘mark all as spam’ and get back to what I was doing.  It’s almost effortless.

Six Apart – where are your spam filtering tools?  You guys can do better than this.  Until TypePad can recognize that trackbacks that talk about donkey sex, incest, child porn, and rape are pretty darn likely to be SPAM and put it in a seperate area labeling it as such, I must turn off my TrackBacks on TypePad.  And that’s a shame for both me and the blogging community.   Oh and while I'm griping, I'll now add that I just realized that TypePad's Configure tab only gives me the option of turning off trackbacks for new posts.  I now ALSO have to manually go through each and every post I ever created and edit the post, and then uncheck the checkbox that says "Accept TrackBacks".  There is no tool for mass editing acceptance of TrackBacks on older posts.  Shoot me now.

For those who are still wondering, I’m still torn between whether I prefer TypePad over WordPress, and when time permits intend to write a comprehensive comparison of the two (each has it’s own pros and cons, and is better or less suited for certain tasks/people), although WP is leaping ahead now that the TrackBack spam has become such an enormous problem in TypePad, despite the addition of new comment and trackback management tools...