I’ve upgraded my version of WordPress, and also updated my list of links in the right sidebar. As always, let me know if anything seems weird.
Archive for the ‘site’ Category
As I’m sure reading this on the site itself and not in an RSS reader have noticed, the look here has changed. I like this new theme visually, but functionally there some things I’m not sure about – especially the fact that it only shows the contents of only the most recent post and just titles for the rest. Please let me know what you think; if others seem to share these reservations I’ll either fix it or revert to the old theme.
UPDATE: never mind. Other people commented on the same display-one-post issue, confirming my impression that it was a bad idea. That’s a pity, because I like other things about that theme (“sunset”). Instead I’ve switched to another theme (“fall colors”) that I also like, and tweaked it a bit. Let’s see how that works out.
Do I want to know why weirdsexlaws.com seems to be linking to my site? No, I don’t think so. Even for an infophile like me, some things don’t seem worth knowing.
As some of you know, this blog moves around a lot. Here’s a list of previous homes from two moves ago, and here are some thoughts from last time – when I didn’t even bother mentioning who the new host was (InMotion, so Google will see this). That was only January, and already it’s time again. This post is being made at GlowHost, and if you see it that means I’m already there as far you’re concerned.
P.S. There’s one other change: I didn’t move over the Revivio forum that was the only thing in the atyp.us domain. I have it backed up, but don’t intend to make it live again. The only posts there for months had been spam, and I got tired of cleaning out several dozen of those every few weeks.
I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. The process seems to have been admirably simple and painless, and as far as I can tell everything is working fine, but if you see any glitches please let me know.
Hack the Planet is ten years old. Congratulations, Wes. Looks like this site (including all of its previous hosts and platforms) just turned eight, BTW.
The spam is back. Comments are moderated again until this storm abates.
There’s still some spam, but it’s only a trickle and it’s more nonsense than obscene so I’ll just delete it after the fact.
I was talking to someone who’s just getting into blogging – more about that soon, I’m sure – and the topic of commenting came up. As we discussed it, I remembered that I had meant to post something about comments here, so here we go. My comment policy is essentially very simple: I only delete spam. I have comment moderation turned on not to restrict legitimate comments but because lately Akismet – as good as it is, and it really is very good – hasn’t been catching everything. Rather than have icky spam attached to my most-current and most-read articles, I’m leaving moderation on until Akismet catches up with whatever trick this wave is using. I expect that won’t be long, and then I’ll turn moderation off again because I prefer to run that way. There are only two cases in which I can even imagine a reasonable claim that I deleted or disallowed something that wasn’t spam.
- In one case, I chose to hide a particular post and its comments from search engines, including a referrer check that will decline to produce the content if the request came from a search engine. The post is still there, you can still see it if you come here and use my search feature or otherwise know to look for it, but you can’t get to it from Google. I am sensitive to the internet sometimes remembering things longer than it should; that was my compromise between being an accessory to continued harm and being guilty of censorship.
- I define spam rather broadly. My definition includes advocacy or endorsement for a product, party, or position without what I consider a good-faith attempt to do more than advertise. Yes, I reserve the right to make that determination myself. This is my own virtual property, after all. On exactly one occasion, I deleted a comment that was spam by the just-given definition but probably not considered so by its author. Too bad for him.
That said, I’m sure some readers will be tempted to point out that I’ve often been rude to people who have crossed me here, told them to go away, etc. Yes, I have. I will almost undoubtedly continue to do so when I think the situation warrants, though I’d prefer to have more civil conversations. What I won’t do, unless and until I find a reason to change my policy and announce such a change, is delete people’s comments. You can disagree with me, you can annoy me, you can do whatever you want but – at least for now – as long as you don’t spam me I’ll leave your comment up.
Yes, comments are enabled on this post. Can I comment on yours?
This is as much for my own reference as anything else, but readers who have their own blogs might appreciate some perspective. Let’s establish a ten-point scale for blog influence, where one is a blog that only the blogger’s immediate family and friends read or care about (zero is left as an exercise for the reader), five is something of significant interest within a narrow community (e.g. devotees of a particular hobby or users of a particular site/product) and ten is something that challenges or overlaps with the professional pundit class of newspaper-editorial writers and such. I’d say this blog is a four, or maybe even a three. Judging by what I can see in logs and comments, all three aspects – political, technical, personal – of my writing here attract a non-trivial but still modest audience. In that context, then, some stats from February…
- Unique visitors: 9900
- Total visits: 23176
- Pages (i.e. things actually requested by users): 50903
- Hits (i.e. including images and other stuff that gets pulled in automatically): 217088
The “just missed” part is that I almost got 10K unique visitors. I think visits are the best measure, though, since they measure not just number of readers but also interest level for those readers – sort of, in the sense that disinterested readers probably won’t generate many visits each. I don’t have the numbers from my last host handy, but I can see that in November of 2005 my record for visits was still around 18K. I do pay a little bit of attention to visits/day, though, and my general vague impression is that the site had been in quite a lull for quite a while with that figure around 500-600. For it to be around 800 is actually pretty good. I’m sure some of that was driven by the FairTaxBots and won’t continue, but then again maybe I’ll find something else interesting to write about.