Monday
Sep102007
A Note On Comments
Monday, September 10, 2007 at 9:17AM 
This blog has been up for four days and already Aksimet has imprisoned over 5,000 spam comments!
I hope that will explain why I don't post all your comments immediately. The first time you post a comment it's held for approval, but once you have one comment approved future comments will go up immediately. It's actually a pretty cool system. One more reason to love Wordpress. Incidentally you do not have to register to comment - in fact, I'm not even sure what the point of registration is. I'd turn it off if I could figure out how.
Some people have asked me if I'll still post on Pownce and Jaiku. I'm not really sure. I think I'll probably put some things up there - TWiT alerts and so on - but my plan is to put most everything else here. I will definitely use this instead of my old Vox and Tumblr blogs. It's kinda cool to see all the old posts here going back to 2001, and I think I'd like to keep that kind of record going. (There are currently 949 posts and 19,548 comments, contained within 35 categories.)
I have been able to import all the Vox posts thanks to Blogbackuponline.com. (Cool service by the way.) It crawls all the old posts and spits them back up as RSS, which Wordpress can import. All the original videos and pictures are still hosted on Vox, though, and I can't get them back. There are also some formatting issues which you'll notice whenever there's an embedded video from Vox. But it's better than nothing. I can only get the last 20 Tumbléo posts - but that's fine, they're just ephemera anyway, not personal posts. Someday when I have some time I'd like to go back through all the old posts and clean them up - tag them and so on. Unfortunately all the really old comments are now anonymous (and you'll have to read the Vox comments on Vox) but at least they've been preserved.
Which raises an interesting question. If I embed links to photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, etc - in other words if I don't host the media here - what happens in a few years when those other services disappear? I was thinking, for example, of occasional video posts which I'd host on videoegg.com since I can't afford the bandwidth myself. But those posts won't have the longevity of plain old text posts. I guess I should stick to prose? It makes me think there will be a lot of audio and video blogs which will won't be available in 20 or 30 years.
Reader Comments (46)
If you were liking the tumblr bookmarklet, you might like the quickpost wordpress plugin (http://web.twelvehorses.com/projects/quickpost/) . It tries to copy the functionality for wordpress. Still a bit buggy, but already very usefull.
Ooo. Very cool. Installing it now. The Wordpress community rocks! Thanks!
I was going to suggest Blogbackuponline but I see you already found it. Very sweet backup sollution.
First of all thanks for everything. Now you will know who is always trying to download podcasts early. I love all of them DGW, TWIT, MBW, MC, JM, SN (I voted), FLOSS, darn I thought I could remember them all, but I don't think I did. Doh' NATN (where's #33, eh?) ;)
Reminder, You didn't "post the feed" for DGW #396 (even though as always it's "available" anyway). Geez, you REALLY must have had a bunch of coffee before you recorded that.
Twit, LLC. woo-hoo :) Yeah, you definitely paid extra for all that LLC stuff. Hey, don't just hand out stock certificates willy-nilly (have you hired an Attorney yet?, or even a CPA?)
Ohh, don't forget to get the "Admin Drop Downs" plugin. I don't have the link handy but since you have G.A.M. I'm sure you can find it. Oh and of course the feedburner plugin. Ohh and "customizable post listings" at coffee2code.com.
Since your reading this first anyway, DON'T POST IT. Please, just shoot me an email instead and I'll give a list of the Wordpress plugins I love. Lesterchan (weird URL) has a bunch of good ones to.
Leo, you rock. You make tech fun and work so much more bearable. Although I'd need 18 hours of Leo podcast's daily to REALLY get by.
Take good care.
Re: items on other services disappearing eventually... You also have to consider, will you always own and host leoville.com. 20 or 30 years from now, will any of this still be here? Look at how many great sites 10 or 15 years ago are long gone now. I can't imagine blogs will be any different.
Spam blocked counter already up past 5,330 at this moment.
Flickr disappear? Banish the thought. Actually, -I- could be gone in twenty years, so I won't worry about it.
I think this is a smart move Leo. I wouldn't want to think about managing all these profiles on different sites. If I'm too busy for it, I know you are.
Hi Leo
If you want to store valued videos for the long term check out this link
http://www.archive.org
http://www.archive.org/about/about.php
It would be very cool if you could enable OpenID for the comments, which would probably help cut down on the spam, too.
That begs the question, is how often does the wayback machine at archive.org renew itself, and how complete is it?
I tried the openid plugin for wordpress but it had cosmetic issues with this template I don' t have time to sort out. And since I'm neither requiring nor encouraging logging in, I think I'll wait for an update.
Finally Leo has found a blog home. Very nice, Leo. Keep it going ...
Thanks for the years of shows, tips, and just all around good fun. Love the new blog design and it makes me want to get my wordpress blog set up and running.
Wow Nice
This looks great Leo. I always think of myself as an early adopter and things at Leoville change all the time. Which is of course....great.Its nice to have your blog here at Leoville where it belongs. I have been all around the web looking at Vox and all the other sites.Its been quite a journey.I will keep coming back.Keep up the good work!
ger
Hey Leo,
So glad to see you're protecting your blog against abuse while avoiding the dreaded CAPTCHA, which usually locks out blind and visually impaired users. Way to go!
Hey Leo! I just visited your new WP blog for the first time and was thrilled to see you went with the Cutline theme... I brought the same 3-column theme online back in June and I think it's awesome.
A quick note about your Archives link... no matter which month you choose, the heading still shows 'entries from September 2007'. Thought you'd want to know.
Love your work. Don't burn out.
[...] missed it at the time, but Leo Laporte has switched to WordPress as his primary blogging platform. « San Francisco Upgrade Party Comment [...]
If you want to take off the registration thing, it should be on your main options page in your dashboard.
Hey,
Welcome to the wordpress community. Glad to see you on board.
Hi Leo! Welcome to the Wordpress community! =)
Hi Leo. Nice content. If I may, the http://recaptcha.net/plugins/wordpress" rel="nofollow">reCaptchya random image pluginsolved ALL my spam issues. You should try it. A tiny bit of work for your commenters, but stops SPAM in its tracks.
BTW I've subscribed to your blog . . . I really enjoy your program and your take on tech! Oh, and very nice choice on Wordpress and your theme. I change themes like they are items of clothing, but you picked a really good one: Cutline.
peace
damien
NOTE: Sorry, just wanted to add that Akismet captures good comments sometimes, i don't use it anymore after alienating some people by spammig their comments inadvertently. Recaptchya takes away the need to moderate and/or use akismet. Just passing my experience along!
[...] begann, hat sich mittlerweile zu über 900 Stück gesteigert. (Ganz so schlimm wie bei anderen ist es dann aber doch nicht.) Glücklicherweise gibt es ja Akismet, sodass die Spamkommentare [...]
Glad to hear that you made the big switch to WP!
Enjoy
Darin
hi! my first visit too :).
To turn off registration, just go to "options" "general" and uncheck the box, "anyone can register". Then edit your sidebar file and just remove the line that says, "register".