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I’ve been getting a lot of trackback spam lately. I suppose it could be worse, but it’s only started happening quite recently. I really wasn’t sure what it was at first. I know now that it’s spam. Though it just seems like people are making blogs and filling them with other peoples posts. No advertising penile enlargements, Viagra and general hardcore acts. Just snippets of posts with a link to the post to read the rest.
I found a list of tools for helping to combat this evil. Would anyone recommend any?
A few people were kind enough to offer some advice as to why I have display problems with Internet Explorer as mentioned yesterday.
Jennifer Farley said, “It happens to me when I place an image that is wider than the main column in the post.”
Im not entirely sure if this happens for me, but I always make sure my images are less than the width of the main column (about 470px).
nerd tells me “fixed width is bad” - I barely know what that is. I think is it something about how the width moves according to different resolutions?
The most interesting is that the tags could be causing the problems, according to McAWilliams. In his comment he included a link to the results of my blog after hit had been put through the W3.org XHTML Validator.
I’m not sure how valid this validator is though:
http://fustar.org - Failed validation, 28 errors
http://mulley.net - Failed validation, 33 errors
http://www.mneylon.com/blog - Failed validation, 35 errors
http://scobleizer.com - Failed validation, 41 errors
http://ocaoimh.ie - Failed validation, 45 errors
http://www.conoroneill.com - Failed validation, 55 errors
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur - Failed validation, 67 errors
http://www.kenmc.com - Failed validation, 77 errors
http://www.tomrafteryit.net - Failed validation, 93 errors
http://words.iced-coffee.com - Failed validation, 140 errors
http://irish.typepad.com/irisheyes - Failed validation, 194 errors
http://www.adammaguire.com/blog - Failed validation, 418 errors
In response, the blog started out with a wordpress theme, which I have altered, but not much as any more just goes way over my head and I end up screwing it all up. I also write most of my entries using the Rich Text Editor. Could it be the Rich Text Editor?
I just noticed that my sidebar in Internet Explorer is way down the bottom of the page. As a Firefox user I haven’t noticed this before. The only time I use IE is in work; a more-shit-than-usual IE where flash, quicktime, streaming just about anything and much javascript don’t work. But my sidebar is at the top where it should be.
If anyone else sees the blog like this let me know. Then get Firefox!
If you can help me fix this, that would be super great!
Updated:
I gotta make sure I don’t have any media on the blog wider than 460px. Turns out that was the cause of the problems. That bloody Penguin! It was 470px.
I noticed a problem with the blog the other day; the ‘next’ and ‘previous’ links at the bottom of the page seem to have disappeared. I think it may have something to do with my wordpress upgrade. I got my host to do this for me as part of their services include installation of software such as Wordpress, so surely they can update my current version too.The problem is that I think whatever they did may have made my ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons at the bottom of the page disappear.
Maybe its time for a revamp anyway.
Update
WTF - I don’t even have an ‘export’ tab in my ‘manage’ tab in my wordpress dashboard. Whats up with that!?
I hate computers!
Update
Problem solved - it was the fault of the Adhesive plugin, and because I tend to install plugins en mass its hard to know which one does the damage. Good to know I’m not the only one experiencing this problem too.
Having finally got this blog to a state where I am actually happy with it, I have moved to putting all of my free time into my other blog, and of course am having various minor problems with it.
This plan is to collaborate with a few friends on this one - friends who barely know what a blog is, but I know it will work once we get around the technical side of things; wordpress is pretty simple to use for anyone who is just concerned with writing and publishing online.
I thought last night it would be a good idea to copy everything from my ‘plugins’ folder of this blog to the pc then to the new blog. Afterwards I realised that some plugins require small adjustments to the loop files and some put files in other folders, so over the weekend I will be installing them all manually, reading over the installation instructions again for each one. However, I must admit I get a great sense of enjoyment and satisfaction when something works out and I like the way it works. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I’ll be able to put it online.
I’m really having a lot of trouble getting a WordPress theme I really like. The one I have at the minute ‘Andreas04 2.0‘ was beginning to grow on me, but I’ve just discovered that in each entry page the title (in the top title bar) says the words “Andreas04: Close to Attraction’. My unfortunate lack of coding knowledge means that I will have to find another one. I just can’t find the perfect theme.
I do have some ideas of my ‘perfect theme’ - qualities if you will.
- I don’t want it to stretch the whole width of the page. Really just enough for 500px width pictures in posts.
- 2 columns
- A header picture (I don’t know how to alter the code myself to put one in).
- No crazy bright colours
- Ideally, the date at the top
- The categories the entry is in should be in the post, near the post title or at the bottom of the post.
- The ‘pages’ links should be in the header
- Simple colours and feel
- Widget compatible!
I really feel that the design of your website/blog tells a lot about the person, and I won’t be satisfied until I find the one I feel reflects me.
I’m often a little slow at picking up new technology and web design techniques. I’ve only just figured out what a widget is, and then it took much longer to work out how to impliment them on my blog. The last 3 days have been spent going through many sites offering wordpress plugins, widgets and tutorials. Then I discovered the that wordpress widget plugin doesnt work with the K2 theme, at least not without playing around with the code in the php files - something I have yet to discover how to do, and I’m not sure if I want to either; something is bound to go horribly wrong.
What I really want to be able to do is display my categories in the sidebar, and have more control over the order of the links. Both of these features seem impossible without much code rearranging.
It could well be time to get a new - widget compatable - theme. So there if you see something strange with the site, thats why.