Buzzsonic.com

Since the blog makeover a couple of weeks ago I’ve been bombarded by comment spam for some reason. Its one of the things that makes blogging work and not fun. So, I finally activated Askimet (Automattic Kismet to give it its full name) on my WordPress install (didn’t really pay attention to it before for some reason?). Its actually working wonders right now and since activating the plug-in its halted more than 2,200 of the most bloodcurdlingly despicable types of spam you can imagine that up to now I’ve been having to edit manually daily.

Askimet comes installed by default in Word Press but you have to activate it in the Plugins area in your admin area and get a free APi key. A five minute task that’ll save you hours of work weekly.

Related Links

Askimet FAQ ( Askimet)

Here’s a really useful widget for people with blogs or multiple memberships at social networks, bookmarking sites and the like. If you’re like me you probably have profiles at a bunch of different websites, Flickr, MySpace, Digg, YouTube and such. With ShowYourself you can combine all your profiles on the web into one neat looking widget that you can put on your blog, your MySpace page or anywhere on the web.

With developer Dustin Bachrach’s app you type in your usernames for the sites you use and clear the checkboxes for those you don’t. The ShowYourself widget-builder lists around two dozen popular destinations, from AIM to Last.fm to YouTube, and you can easily add others.

Via Lifehacker.com

Related Links
Yahoo Widgets (Yahoo.com)
WordPress Widgets (Wordpress.com)

I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was causing the Windows Live Writer to crash everytime I tried to insert an image into a post. I back tracked a couple of days to see which recent Firefox plug-ins I’d added and it turns out it was the MySpace toolbar I mentioned here causing the problem.

So, out goes the toolbar and there ends the head scratching. Though at least one good thing came out of my search for solutions, discovering Flickr4Writer.

I’m toggling between using Windows Live Writer for posting right now vs. using the Performancing Firefox add-on ScribeFire. Though for the last two days the Live Writer has been crashing everytime I try to add an image to the post. After losing two hours work yesterday I was on the brink of dumping the app completely and returning to ScribeFire.Having second thoughts Writer is simply fuller featured and offers things like the ability to add images to posts (ScribeFire doesn’t) and preview the post in your blog before publishing (much like WordPress does in the admin panel), two features I cant really do without.

Also ScribeFire doesn’t seem to have a minimize option so you either have to put up with it hogging the bottom of your screen, or you save and close. Obtrusive and I hate obtrusive, its what sends me rushing to the delete option!

Anyway, the crashing. Until I find the conflict (it used to work fine) I found an excellent plug-in which works around the problem Flickr4Writer.

Flickr4Writer is a simple plugin for Windows Live Writer that enables you to browse Flickr and insert an image from Flickr into a Writer post. The project is part of CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.

This one is really down to individual needs and every user is different but here’s what Add-Ons I’m running right now as part of my ‘ultimate’ browser set-up. Naturally my browser of choice is Firefox and has been for about three years.

First I dumped the default Firefox theme and installed Noia 2.0 Extreme which is a little more streamlined and sharper looking.

I read way too many RSS news feeds daily and if I’m not using my desktop reader of choice, FeedDemon (which has recently replaced RSS Bandit) Sage is a brilliant RSS feed reader and manager that tends to be less resources heavy than the desktop equivalents and sits in the sidebar of Firefox. Read the rest of this entry »

I mentioned this WordPress plug-in briefly in yesterdays post here , though I didn’t elaborate much. But anyway, Postalicious is another useful plug-in that you may find of use if you’re running a WordPress blog.

Postalicious is a plug-in that automatically posts your del.icio.us bookmarks to your blog. I’m using it here and it works great if you are running Firefox with the del.icio.us browser extension. That way you can add bookmarks as you browse without visiting del.icio.us and at the end of the day the plug-in will add your daily finds as a post. Neato.

Related

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection (QuickOnlineTips.com)
Del.icio.us Firefox Extension (Del.icio.us)
Del.icio.us A to Z By Function (Econsultant.com)

I’ve been using the blogging software WordPress for around three years now and in all of that time there really is nothing to touch it. Why? Its free (Open Source), it has a massive user base and support network, plug-ins, mods, widgets and themes galore, oh and did I mention it doesn’t cost a penny?

Of course free doesn’t always mean great but in this case, you get what you don’t pay for. I have tried literally hundreds of mods over the years, different themes/skins and modifications. Basically I like to tinker and I think I’m getting closer to my ideal WordPress install (at least for my needs).

Buzzsonic.com (as of today) runs on WordPress v2.0.2, so its not the latest install (which is v2.1.2). Anyway, I thought I’d list my top ten (or eleven!) modifications which I’m finding the most useful right now. This could well change soon but these are what I consider the most useful WordPress mods.

1. Glossy Blue Theme- For a simple, quick overhaul of the default WordPress look this neat two column Web 2.0-ish looking theme is one of the easiest ways to get a cool looking make-over. A close second was Glued Ideas Subtle which you might go for if you prefer a three column look. Honorable mentions go to Misty Look and Semiologic (I’m using an older install of this theme here). Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror looks at how the increased bandwidth of a popular blog can throttle a Website and offers some tips. In one way its a nice problem to have as it means you’re getting traffic but there are some straight forward tips here to cutting down on bandwidth usage. The biggest culprit for many is images, there are enough third party image hosting solutions (Flickr is the one which immediately springs to mind of course) around for that to not to be an issue anymore. Also as Jeff mentions, your RSS feed is a bandwidth leech. Again services like FeedBurner can snuff out this problem.

Of course we’ve never had Website meltdown here at Buzzsonic, though we got an indication of how bandwidth can spike within minutes of a popular story being linked to by a news site when Slashdot picked up on a story and bandwidth usage went up fifty fold within hours.

Related Reading

We Got Slashdotted and Survived (Buzzsonic.com)
Using Amazon S3 As An Image Hosting Service (Coding Horror)

OK, its been a long time since I even looked at this blog, let alone posted to it. Main reason? Well, I simply had too many projects running, including four blogs and two directories, so cutting those down is going to help to prioritize. Oh, the full time job kind of gets in the way too! So its down to Buzzsonic and iExploreFlorida.com only now and I’ve been trying two blogging tools that I think are going to help in shaving off some time wasting. I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to do my posts at Florida Travel Hacks which has actually been great, though I’m now also trying the Performancing plug-in (since renamed ScribeFire) for Firefox which is enabling me to blog using the browser rather than having to log-in to my Word Press admin area.

Live Writer also has a Firefox extension which I’m going to be trying as well. So, will be adding feedback here and seeing if a favourite emerges. Post wise, I’m pretty much going to be covering the same stuff though will adding more resources for fellow bloggers. Stay tuned !