Google Penguin 2.0: Are You Nervously Watching Your Traffic Stats?

by Raelene Wilson May 24^th, 2013 6 Responses

If you don’t compulsively hit refresh on your site’s traffic stats, you might want to go and take a look.

Google has released the latest – and highly anticipated – update to its anti-spam algorithm, Penguin 2.0.

WordPress users could be forgiven for welcoming the news with trepidation. After the last major update a year ago many sites took a massive hit in traffic… including WPMU.org

This time, the roll-out hasn’t come as a surprise. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, announced on his personal blog on May 22 the roll out of the next generation of the algorithm was complete.

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins

10 Proven Ways To Stop BuddyPress Spam

by Sarah Gooding April 8^th, 2013 5 Responses

WordPress sites are tasty morsels for spammers. BuddyPress seems to be even more popular, because not only can users comment on blogs but they can also run wild in the activity streams, forums and private messaging inboxes with offers for pharmaceuticals and fashion handbags. Unfortunately, spam is an irritating problem for virtually 100% of BuddyPress sites.

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Plugins, BuddyPress Tutorials

How to Tackle Spam With The BuddyPress Spam Link Plugin

by Sarah Gooding October 10^th, 2012 9 Responses

BuddyPress spam is a perennial problem that can negatively affect your social network. At times it can seem like weeds taking over your beautiful garden. Everyone knows what it’s like to receive spam emails but when your members begin receiving spam messages through your community, they may feel as though their profile, participation and experiences are not secure. That is why, when building a community, it’s important to maintain good spam protection; a spam-free experience produces subtle confidence that will keep your users returning.

WordPress Plugins

The 36 Free Plugins That Every WordPress User Could Need

by Tom Ewer September 7^th, 2012 24 Responses

Back in March of this year, I published The Top 100 WordPress Plugins For Your Site. It was a list of the most popular plugins available on WordPress.org, filtered and sorted by compatibility, freshness, and ratings.

As I expected, reactions to the post were a mix between, “This is a great resource — thanks!”, and “This is the worst post I have ever seen in my life — you are an awful human being”.

Or something similar to that anyway. I’m paraphrasing.

The 36 Free Plugins Every WordPress User Could Need

WordPress Plugins

Verify Your WordPress Users with a Text Message

by Craig Grella August 17^th, 2012 2 Responses

SMS Verification plugin from wedevs is a new plugin which adds member and user verification through SMS text messaging. It’s a great plugin to add an extra level of security and user verification, which works well with blogs setup as member sites, and is particularly useful for forum runners who need another level of spam deterrent.

The plugin works by hiding content behind a shortcode that is activated when the plugin is installed and configured.

Plugins

Spam Destroyer Really Works To Kill WordPress Spam

by Sarah Gooding August 10^th, 2012 3 Responses

WordPress comment spam is a never-ending problem, and this keeps me constantly on the hunt for the best spam killing plugin. CAPTCHA’s can sometimes work but we all hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. Even the fancy ones with images and game are just lame and inconvenient.

WordPress Plugins

How to Stop WordPress Trackback Spam

by Joe Foley July 27^th, 2012 4 Responses

If you’re having a problem with WordPress trackback spam, then there are few different ways to go about combating it.
Turn Off Trackbacks
The first method is pretty obvious – just turn trackbacks off.

To do this, go to Settings > Discussions > uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).”

So this is fine, and a sure fix, but what if you want to allow legitimate trackbacks? Well, there are few different plugins you can choose from.

Simple Trackback Validation – Download

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Ping Plugin will Help You Avoid Being Labeled a Spammer

by James Dunn July 5^th, 2012 3 Responses

How many times have we all written that perfect post to our site, formatted it beautifully, and then published it only to discover a misspelled word, a comma splice, or an incomplete sentence? Then, we edit it to correct our minor mistake and update the post. Uh-Oh, their’s there’s a word that we misused. Simple, correct it again and update the post yet again. No problem, right? This activity could get your post tagged as Spam. Read on to discover how to prevent that possibility.
Why Would This Get You Tagged As a Spammer?

WordPress Plugins

Can Cloudflare Make WordPress Sites Load Faster and Perform Better?

by Matthew Tschoegl June 20^th, 2012 5 Responses

What Does It Do?
The question on the lips of everyone who has run, is running, or ever will run a website is: “How Can I Make My D*!#$ Site Load Faster!” Cloudflare believes it has an answer. To quote directly from their website copy:

Can Cloudflare Make Your Wordpress Website Load Faster?

Plugins

Get Fruity Comment Spam Protection with WP Pineapple!

by Tom Ewer June 11^th, 2012 Leave a comment

Spam is one of those few things in life that doesn’t polarize opinion.

Everyone hates spam. Even spammers hate spam. When I browse through the spam folder on my blog (which I occasionally do to check that no genuine comments have been caught), the absurdity of the spam comments never ceases to amaze me.

I assume that there must be some worth in these attempts to gain backlinks, but it is difficult to believe how.