From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Blog Management 101

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Blog Management 101

May 21, 2004

I'm not much of one for posting tech-talk related to my blog; I'm just learning as I go and diggin' it. BUT, I do need to mention two things.

One, apologies if you came to Rosenblog this a.m. and got a very truncated version. I discovered that mysteriously, the entire right-hand column had disappeared. No blogroll, search box, quick links to recent visitor comments, nothing. On top of that, instead of the usual 15 or so visible posts, things were cut off in the middle of about the third one.

Discovering that all my code was still in the main templates box, and all the posts likewise still there at the back end, I did a simple rebuild of main templates, and everything was back to normal. This is probably super-basic site repair, but I guess I'm the tiniest bit proud that I managed to suss it out on my own.

Two, let me register my profound disgust with the porn site blog trollers out there. They dig up an old item from a legitimate blogger's archive and then make some utterly useless comment, only so that they can leave a link to their putrid site.

Because - like many bloggers - I have links to recent visitor comments near the top of my page, the despicable trollers potentially get a minute or two of exposure if someone clicks on their comment and then on their name-to-site link at the end of the comment, if they have a site, that is. Granted, it's unlikely anyone would be curious enough to do that after reading their utterly vapid remarks (i.e. "it is so very nice here, I can't think of a better place to be").

Regardless, their "comments" and site link are excised ASAP, and each new transgressor will be IP banned to hell, at least here.

However, I'm NOT going to remove the comment feature, or the optional posting of commenters' website URLs. Blogging is an organic process. The vast majority of commenters and commenter web site links are on the up-and-up, and add to the ever-thickening and tasty stew that is the blogosphere. The rest will continue to be quickly weeded out, to the best of my ability.