FeedWordPress and Multiply, WordPress Upgrade and Akismet

FeedWordPress and Multiply

For the first time, I tried to syndicate a Multiply-based blog into Planet Singapura, an aggregator blog which uses FeedWordPress. Even though I can syndicate the RSS feed successfully, however the output is a bit different from others. Usually, a hyperlink from an article will point to the permanent link at the origin blog, however, for Multiply-based blog, the hyperlink will be pointed to a page within Planet Singapura itself.

For example, an article titled Planet Singapura by one of its contributors has its hyperlink to be pointed to a page within Planet Singapura itself (http://planet.sg.or.id/?p=1586) instead of to the original permanent link at the contributor's blog (http://lailanurhayati.multiply.com/reviews/item/28), not too sure why. The non-existence of a link to the original blog causes difficulties for Planet Singapura readers to read the full article and add comments, especially since I turned off the comments option on Planet Singapura, to encourage the readers to post comments on the original contributors' blogs instead.

WordPress Upgrade to 2.0.5 (Ronan)

I also have upgraded all my Wordpress-based blogs (Minda Indra, Planet Indra and Planet Singapura) to version 2.0.5. Not too sure why they named this version "Ronan", its website said that they would like to congratulate Ryan Boren (who is Ryan Boren anyway) on his new son, Ronan.

Upgrading WordPress, as usual, is a breeze. The website provides detailed instruction on how to upgrade from version 2.0.4 to 2.0.5, which is exactly the same method as when I upgraded from version 2.0.3 to 2.0.4.

Akismet Activation

Earlier today, I read an article on JalanSutera regarding how the Wordpress-based blog fights spam using Akismet, an anti-spam plug-in for Wordpress to fight spam comments. Pujiono, JalanSutera's administrator, mentioned that the number of spam comments received by the blog reaches 10,000, and thanks to Akismet, all the spam comments were caught.

This reminds me that every day, I also need to delete at least 100-200 spam comments on Minda Indra per day (not reaching 10,000 though), and such spam-deleting work is really time-consuming and irritating. I have heard about anti-spam plug-ins such as Akismet or Spam Karma, but I also received some reports about quite a lot of false-positive incidents on both plug-ins, discouraging me to activate or install such plug-ins.

However, something needs to be done to resolve this, and I tried to activate Akismet on Minda Indra today. To activate Akismet is very easy, I just need to go to Dashboard > Plugins, and once activated, I need to key in my WordPress.Com's API key to get it running. I don't have any issues in obtaining the key since I already have an account on wordpress.com.

So far, the Akismet has caught 28 spam comments since it was installed several hours ago, and I have checked, no false-positives so far. Hopefully this will make my blogging life much easier. :)