Other than Akismet and Spam Karma 2 (SK2) , WordPress bloggers now have another reason to cheer up with the new anti spam plugin from Six Apart
If your current anti spam is not working as what you’ve expected, why not give Typepad Antispam a try. It is now available for WordPress blogs and the current version 1.02 released recently is compatible with WordPress up to version 2.5
The installation process and activation which require API key, are very much similar with Akismet. It is not surprising, since the TypePad AntiSpam plugin for WordPress is derived from WP-Akismet by Matt Mullenweg. It is so similar even the ‘Caught Spam’ page has similar sentence and is differentiated only by plugin name (perhaps this is one of the T&C agreed between them).
I have Akismet and Typepad Anti Spam running on parallel for the last few days, and both of them managed to catch the same number of spams (and similar spams). The result is expected since it has similar design, but hope to see more from Typepad Anti Spam in future.
The initial run is considerably good, but the biggest advantage of Typepad over Akismet is, it is free for commercial and personal usage. I bet more commercial sites and prominent bloggers will turn to Typepad Anti Spam, after if it is proven effective later on.
“Akismet has caught 49,750 spam for you since you first installed it”
This is the number of spam comments/trackbacks/linkbacks that I’ve received over the last 13months. It translates to 125 daily (13 months=395 days). Without them, it is definitely a nightmare to bloggers. Thank you so much to Akismet for your service. Typepad Anti Spam, welcome aboard!
The second most anticipated football event in the world after World Cup, Euro 2008 will be kicked off in the next 10/11 days (depend on your region). This round, the championship will be co-hosted by Austria-Switzerland.
And to remind you that (especially girls), your favorite team, England is not qualified. So don’t expect to watch the likes of Beckham or Rooney on TV. But perhaps ,they still be there as spectator, pity them.. lol
To liven up this game among WordPress community, Sven Kubiak has created WP Euro 2008, a wordpress plugin to display the live result and incoming match on your wordpress blog. Cool right??
The data is taken from Open Liga (via web service) and refreshed every 5 minutes. You must have PHP 5 with SOAP extension to have this plugin work. My attempt to install it was unsuccessful due to my PHP 5 lacking this extension.
This is must have plugin for Zaki and Zool ( you have arsenal blog rite??), since they’re great fan of football. I’m going for France! Who do you think will win?
Plugin Homepage (translated to english)
Previously I had written on how to fill up your article directory with free articles from UAW. With similar service, you can actually turn your WordPress into article directory using this plugin.
Preparation before installation.
It is recommended to do keyword and market research before the setup of any new blogs. Since no category is provided/created by this plugin or by UAW, you’re required to create appropriate categories prior to installation, although you can add or remove the category later on.
Installation
- Like other plugins, installation is straight forward. Upload the plugin folder into the /wp-content/plugin and activate it from your plugin menu.
- After installation, if you’re using WordPress 2.5.1, browse to setting followed by UAW-Control. This is the UAW admin menu, where you setup everything including how many articles you want to receive per day, categories (it is based on the categories you have created earlier) and etc
The plugin might not work perfectly at the moment. UAW is in the middle of making this plugin better (they’d just finished gathering info from the user), so you might see certain issues arising such as below
- Articles received not matching the category
- No article received for certain category
After everything is in place and you have start receiving articles, you might want to add, modify or remove categories, or move the articles from one category to another.
Auto blogging
This is what I was talking about before. Yes, this is possible with the combination of this plugin with WordPress and Blogspot. Set it to auto approve each articles on the niche topic of your choice, and you got blog that has new contents everyday.
I have read about RSStoblog or Article Extractor plugin that allows you to setup article directory on WordPress platform or doing auto posting, but that plugin will cause you hundred bucks. With this plugin, you can kick your auto blogging within a minute and free of charge.
Every tool has its down side and this plugin is not perfect either. While the combination of RSStoblog + Article Extractor can provide you the article on the topic of your choice on daily basis, UAW plugin is not able to do so 100%. First, it still depends on the article availability at certain time, and secondly, it is possible that certain categories won’t have or receive any articles, again due to no article on that particular topic.
Another thing that I don’t really recommend is, if let’s say you’re away or unable to update your blog, turn on this plugin and let it posts a new article daily. But, this might turn your visitor away from your blog later on.
Btw, this article is not meant to teach you how to spam the net with duplicate contents on different blogs, but to give you idea on how you can setup auto-pilot blog. Use it at your own risk. ;~)
The plugin control panel has almost similar pages : Site Demo
click to enlarge
