Changes

So, some changes round here.  And a promise to blog a little bit more often.

I’ve merged all the veggie baby stuff into here, because if I can’t manage to post on one blog, I don’t stand a chance of keeping up with two.  But Henry’s just started weaning now, so any veggie-children-like topics will be tagged as ‘veggie baby’.

I’ve changed the theme – I like it.  Lighter and brighter.  I haven’t got the sidebars sorted properly yet though, because Mr Newt has not given me the proper permissions and I can’t get to them at the moment.

And I’ve changed the name!  I think it probably sums up what I’ll be blogging about a bit better than ‘littlerach’ – but I can’t change my domain name, that’s here to stay.  So I hope you like it, and if you stopped reading (because I stopped writing!) then I hope you’ll join me again.

Well it’s be AGES

I see that.  Over 6 months.  That’s very bad of me.  And in the meantime I’ve had time to have another baby.  But now we have a very shiny new netbook, and Mr Newt tells me that there’s an addon thing for WordPress that will link it with Gallery and therefore make posting pictures so much easier.  So I’ll have no more excuses for not updating more often – well, other than looking after a baby and a toddler.

Comments on my blog

TypeKey

Since moving to the latest version of Movable Type, the situation with spam has improved. The inbuilt spam plugins seem to catch everything so that nothing appears on site, but they also mean at the moment that even real comments get moderated. So. I’ve tweaked the settings a little bit. It now requires a valid email address before you can comment, and if you have a Typekey registration (see the above link) you can put that in, then once I’ve approved one comment, any further comments will automatically get approved. But you don’t necessarily need one to comment. I’m really annoyed with the spammers, I want to make it impossible for them to get through, without making it too hard for genuine comments to get through. But, because I think more and more blogs will probably start using TypeKey, I thought I’d give it a go. If it makes things too tricky, then I’ll go back to how things were.

Spam again!

I’m really pleased with how MT Blacklist is working, and since I installed it, I don’t think I’ve had a single spam comment published. However, I have had hundreds referred for moderation, which is getting a bit annoying. Especially if I don’t get to check my computer for a couple of days. So, I’ve amended the criteria for blocking comments slightly. Some words that before were only getting comments moderated will now block them altogether.

I’m pretty sure that the words I’ve chosen won’t affect any genuine posters (unless they work in the pharmaceuticals industry!). But if you are a genuine poster, and you do get blocked for any reason, just drop me a line, and I’ll change things back to how they were.

Flickr

I’ve just got myself a Flickr account! I don’t exactly need another photosharing account, as I’ve got Gallery on my own site, and also have a Webshots account. But I saw the Daily Zeitgeist on Hazy’s site, and decided that I had to have one. I really like it so far. It’s easy to add photos, and there’s no total limit on photos, just a monthly upload limit. Although the ‘pro’ account is only $40 a year, so I think I might sign up for that because then you get a few extra features.

So my Daily Zeitgeist is on the right hand sidebar – I hope you like it.

Pinging

Aha!!!! The pinging thing still wasn’t working properly for me when I checked on other people’s Blogrolls where I’m listed. I think this is because a lot of people have my old blog address listed, but they get automatically forwarded here, so they’ve never changed it.

So, to try to solve that, please could I ask anyone interested in Blogrolling me to change their links. The correct address is:

http://www.littlerach.co.uk/newblog/

Or I’ve added a new ‘Blogroll Me’ button at the top of the left hand column if that’s easier. I’m also going to remove the redirection from the old address to try to encourage people to do this.

Apologies for the hassle.

Blog stuff

A bit of a pointless post really (yes, alright, don’t say it – I know most of them are!). I’ve just installed yet another plugin to help reduce spam comments. Again, I don’t really understand it – it’s based on the ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ tag, and it adds this tag to any links posted in comments. I think this means that although you’ll still be able to click on the link as normal, the search engine bots will ignore it. This somehow affects page ranks – but whether it’s ranks for my blog, or ranks for the links posted in comments or both – I’m not sure. I don’t know how this will reduce spam, but there you go. Some people are unhappy about this because they feel that it’s overkill, and that it will damage reputable people’s page ranks as well as the spammers. As I’m really not bothered about page ranking, I thought I’d install it anyway, and see what happens. But there were no installation instructions (apparently it’s too simple to need them), so I just shoved everything into my plugins directory and hoped for the best.

There’s also been various conversations on BBs and blogs about pinging and updates (or rather the lack of it). I’ve just realised that although I do ping various blog sites when I update – Blogrolling isn’t one of them. As loads of people whose blogs I read (and myself) use Blogrolling, I thought this was rather remiss of me – so I’ve added Bloggrolling to my ping list. Hopefully it will work, because at the moment, it’s saying my blog hasn’t been updated since June.

MT Blacklist up and running

Today I’ve installed the correct version of MT Blacklist (doh!) and now it’s working. There’s only one teeny niggle, when I’m viewing the list of blacklisted stuff, but I’m not too bothered about that.

I’ve tried to submit a dodgy comment, and sure enough it was blocked! So hopefully I’ll be able to turn the comment moderation off in a few days – when I’ve given the online casinos a chance to test it.

MT Blacklist

I thought that when I installed the latest version of MT that I’d miraculously managed to get rid of spam comments. In fact, all I’d managed to do was turn off the comment function altogether. Ooops.

That’s turned back on now, and as soon as I did, the spam started again. I’ve still got moderation on all my comments, but I’m getting fed up now, so I’ve installed MT Blacklist. I’ve managed to install it successfully, but to be honest I don’t really know what it does or how it works – so if you try to comment and it gets denied, just email me and I’ll try to sort it out.

More blog messing

Have spent faaaaar too much time today playing with Blog. I was determined not to be beatedn by BookQueueToo, so I upgraded to the latest version of MovableType – version 3.14. That took ages because I kept having to reload files, and my normal ftp program wasn’t working, and all that jazz.

Once it was uploaded – major disaster! Nothing worked. But this time I’d backed everythiing up – or so I thought. But I’d obviously made a dogs dinner of that as well, because my backup file was empty. Anyway, after some tinkering with file permissions I got MT to work. No BookQueueToo (or old BookQueue or any plugins for that matter). More tinkering, and MTAmazon and BookQueueToo appear in the right places. I think I’ve permanently broken the old BookQueue, but that shouldn’t matter any more.

I open BookQueueToo, I can see the sidebar – but nothing happens when I search. So I get new Subscriber ID as instructed (but can only get this from Amazon.com). Still doesn’t work. I’m guessing (because I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing) that it’s because I fudged MTAmazon to make it work on Amazon.co.uk rather than the US site. Anyway, I’ve sent an email to the guy who wrote it (but I’m sure he’s sick of me by now). But really, I MUST write this essay, and as my blog does at least work, I think I’ll have to leave any more tinkering until after exam time!

On a more positive note, I added a little weather picture from Weather Pixie, and I really like that. Oooh – and I’ve just noted some new cool buttons on MT for inserting quotes and uploading files and stuff. I’ll have to try that out.