Recently there was a commenter on the blog that kept leaving a link out to a bad neighborhood. The person would take the time to make a nice decent comment and all. But the link they were dropping was not acceptable by my standards. I do not link out to sketchy web sites from this site! It is just bad mojo and not good for PR, if you catch my drift? On the first blog comment this troll placed, I edited the comment and kindly left a little note in the comment window that said, “Note: Thank you for the nice comment although, I removed your signature link from the comment! It was unacceptable. “

So I went on about my business. Well a day or two later as I was checking comments. I noticed another comment that linked to this same sketchy website. Although this time the anchor text was different. After I noticed this and having remembered leaving the note in the comment, I just deleted the comment this time and went on about my business. Well a day later the blog comment that linked to the same site was there in the blog again.

I decided right then and there that I was going to put up a fence (take some extra measures) to block this troll from making any more comments on the blog. The troll was determined to try and get a link to a certain site from mine! I knew there is way to do this block by using the .htaccess file and adding in a “order allow,deny” statement with an IP address or site domain name. However I than wondered if there were perhaps an easier way to do this? Or thought there should be a way to do this right inside the wordpress admin panel.. Or maybe there is a nice plugin to do this?

Sure Enough! I needed not look any further than right inside the “Discussion” panel area in wordpress. This feature was built right in. The wordpress gurus had this same issue long before me and accommodated their great software with easy measures to rectify the culprit. Right inside the Discussion link from the sidebar there is the Comment Blacklist section and field and using this feature one can block a human from visiting the site. This automatically places the comment in the spam filter. If you have Akismet activated like I do! The comment will never be seen again.

What is nice about this too is how many ways a human can be blocked using this feature. We can enter a word, name, email address, IP or domain name URL in this tool to block any incoming visits that match any parts of the entered critera. This is great because many pesky spammers will naturally use proxy sites to change their IP address.. And these spam heads also sign up and use hundreds of different emails to do their link dropping. Yet many times they only have one or two site URLs that they are trying to plant links to. Here is an example below of how to make the entries on separate lines.

Using the Comment Blacklist those one or two URLs can be easily blocked no matter how many IP or email handles they use. I am happy to report, I never saw that sketchy site link on my blog again.

Important: Be really careful with what words you enter in to be blocked. Because the words used will also be blocked in longer words.. For example, if entered “free” than any comments containing the word “freedom” would be blocked. So you will want to use mostly only unique or full strings for names to block. The words in my example above are just for illustrative purpose. Those are not the words or address I really have entered in my Blacklister. Just be careful what words you enter and put some thought in to the entries. We do not want to block any good comments.

I previously worked at a company that installed custom kitchens. The owner of the company had a good structured system set up of how we did the jobs. We would completely tear out these old kitchens right down to the bare walls and sometimes to the framing studs. The cabinets, appliances and everything, including the kitchen sink was removed. Than, we would do upgrades to the plumbing and electrical before we would rebuild the kitchen! It was defiantly a job that for the most part, was a series of processes. It had to be done in order of sequence for things to go accordingly.

On the day of the new cabinet arrival, we would spend a good part of that day and sometimes two days depending on volume doing what I liked to call stage work. It consisted of un-boxing all the cabinets, removing all the doors and hardware and putting the doors in a safe place away from the main work area. Then we would mark all the cabinets with tape and a marker according to location and style. This had great benefits when it came time to actually start building the kitchen. For one, it made it much easer to handle the cabinets when mounting them on the wall, because you did not have the door in the way and could hold them up from the inside. For two, this reduced the chances of mounting a cabinet in the wrong place because, the cabinets were all marked on the top side according to style and location. For three, you did not have to go back and forth between these small tasks once you started mounting cabinets on the wall. And finally, you did not risk scratching up the doors while doing the heavy work, which the doors are the most visible part of the finished product.

The other workers thought this staging or prep type work was unnecessary and basically they did not like to do it! (Maybe it was their age, not sure) They just wanted to start mounting cabinets on the wall right from day one of the project. They had no patience. So undoubtedly, I was the one that did this stage or the prep work on all the jobs. I had more of an appreciation for the benefits of this step and how it played in to the overall scope of the project.

Once I had everything staged, which was usually in the living room or a side bedroom, I joined them in the kitchen to help with the more significant work. This work consisted of attaching the cabinets together and mounting the cabinet banks on the walls. This work of mounting the cabinets was made much easer and went with out hitch, mostly because of the earlier prep work that was done! The cabinet doors were retrieved , remounted and aligned only after the heavy dirty work was done.

This is a good example of how planning ahead and spending some time on the small things first, goes a long ways to having a nice finished product. Projects are usually always done on time and with no mistakes. The custom kitchen projects always turned out cherry and the customers were very happy.

When I set out to start up my own blog, I first discovered and tried the MovableType management system. I wanted to try it for a day or two and see how I liked it. It went okay but thought I should try out WordPress as well and see which app would work better for me.

I settled on WordPress and have found it a nice application with many great add-ons and widgets readily available and so easy to implement. I downloaded the latest 2.1.1 version of WordPress and applied it on a server and started my blog. Only a few weeks into my blogging venture and already a complete upgrade was recommended. There was some hacker vulnerability in version 2.1.1 and it was recommended to get the newest 2.1.2 version.

At first, I thought it might be somewhat difficult, the upgrade that is! Considering the site files are many and also are tied into a database. However the upgrade went seamlessly. The tutorial at this location Here was a great help and easy to understand. The upgrade was really rather simple.

I am actually glad this upgrade was needed when it was. I am now more familiar with my blog and know how to make a back up of the database for it. Thus, I am now better equipped to handle future upgrades and or server, hardware or other changes.

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