Finally, I’ve been ‘forced’ to replace blogjer’s theme with a new one. Thanks to WordPress 2.6.0 upgrade couple of weeks ago, which had ‘slightly’ broken my previous theme, blogjer has now a new ‘face’.
Broken
Before that, what has been broken? It is the comment section, where the new post is picking up comments from the past posts. Even though the index page is showing 0 comment for a new post, but apparently when the post is being opened (on the single.php file), there are comments at the bottom of it, comments from past posts.
Well, initially I thought it was the database that’s messed up, but I was wrong. And then I suspected is it due to the comment related plugins, such as ‘Brian Threaded Comment’ or ‘Better Comment manager’ plugin? Disabled them and the problem is still there. What else could be wrong? I finally found the solution to the problem, when I switched the theme to the Kubrick theme. So the culprit lies on the theme. I changed couple of things including the comments.php (using the original one) and other lite modifications to the single.php with no luck. Sigh…
I don’t want to get stucked with this error any longer (been spending 2 days try fixing it), furthermore this theme has served blogjer for almost 1.5 year, and has shown some slow speed intermittently. Time to change..
It doesn’t take too long to figure out this theme (thanks Smashing Magazine), it’s like love at first sight; after playing around few minutes with it, i know that this is what I’m looking at, and the rest is history..
Choosing the theme
Honestly, I’ve no idea what I’m looking at. But basically it must be simple, eye-catching, clean, straightforward (in term of coding, no K2 la, aside la) since I need to do some quick modification on it. And it has to be fast-loading theme!!
Apart from that, make sure it didn’t break on the latest wordpress version and compatible on all browsers, or at least on IE and Firefox where most users are.
1 column, 2 columns or 3 columns?
I opted for 3 columns layout with 1/2 sidebars on the right side. Initially, I was thinking of getting similar layout as before, but decided to go with this due to its simplicity. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the outcome.
If you’re new here, this is how blogjer looks like before. And happy reading.
old blogjer design
Silence is golden for spams?
Akismet has caught 60,128 spam for you since you first installed it.
That is the (lucky) number of spams I have received so far. Within 16 months in existence, that’s translated to over 3,758 per months. Pretty huge for a blog like this.
Why on earth am I suddenly talking about spams? No la, it’s just that I’m doing some housekeeping, cleaning up the mess over here and there. Upgrading here and there. Plus minus putting a little touch up on the theme (I’m still feeling slightly lazy writing).
I don’t have the number, but based on the number of comments moderated, I feel that spammer has ‘dropped by’ more than usual. Like unmanned house, which tends to get exposed to burglary higher than manned house, the same fate goes to blogs, I guess.
It’s not really bothering me, but I’m glad that they are still willing to drop by even when I’m not around.. Lol. At least I got someone taking care of blogjer….
Besides, I found lots of comments like below pending approval (I moderate first time commentators). It is not marked as spams (indeed, since they’re not viewed as spams by Akismet), but it is valid comment in the form of spam.
hey nice post.
I will check it out.
interesting site it really learns me a lot…
Are you going to approve it? Well, to me, it depends.. if the post is about tutorial, foods, games, it definitely makes sense, but if the post is about disaster or announcement, the comments will be ‘buried’ right away. Imagine ‘I’ll try it out’ comment for ‘This is not Bill Gates’s daughter‘ post, funny rite. Try what???
For little blogs like this, i don’t think readers will care too much if their comment is deleted accidently, but be considerate..