By default, Wordpress inserts the ‘nofollow’ directive to all author and comment links to make comment spamming unattractive. While this seems like a good thing, the Akismet plugin (included by default with all new Wordpress installs) seems to do a pretty good job of stopping comment spam in the first place.
Over the last two weeks I’ve been getting lots of traffic from Stumbleupon, and also from Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind group (affiliate link), of which I am a grateful member. So I’ve installed Michele Marcucci’s highly recommended NoFollow Free (NOFF) plugin to enable all comment links to pass whatever value they can, as a way of thanking those who’ve taken the trouble to leave a comment.
One of the great things about this plugin is the ability to turn ‘nofollow’ back on again for comments that contains defined words (I’ll leave that list to your imagination), and also the ability to only remove ‘nofollow’ for commenters who leave more than a threshold number of comments. For now I have that set at zero, so we’ll see how it goes.
Another Plugin: WP-DB-Backup
A few days ago I recommended Caroline Middlebrook’s “How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress” eBook. One of the hidden gems (page 22) is a recommendation to install Austin Matzko’s WP-DB-Backup plugin, which basically emails you a full database backup every hour/day/week (take your pick). I’ve only just installed and enabled this so I can’t yet report on its effectiveness, but it sounds like it has juice.
Yet Another Plugin: Robots Meta
Yesterday I wrote about tweaking your robots.txt file so that visiting search engine spiders would behave. One of the commenters, Joost de Valk, has released a Robots Meta plugin that promises fine-tuned control by way of the ‘robots’ metadata directive rather than robots.txt. Again I’ve just installed and enabled this plugin so I can’t yet report on it, but it does neatly sidestep some of the issues that arise from the ‘full site’ applicability of robots.txt. Thanks Joost!
31 responses so far ↓
1 Aditya // Jan 9, 2008 at 5:04 am
Hey…this is pretty cool. I didn’t know about the nofollow issue. Thanks!
2 Mark // Jan 9, 2008 at 5:17 am
@Aditya: Thanks for stopping by. I think WordPress are just being conservative by enforcing nofollow by default, but the plugin works just like it should. And Akismet is so good at trapping comment spam, so I’m hoping the spam risk is minimal!
3 Tina Su - Think Simple Now // Jan 9, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Hey Mark,
WP-DB-Backup sounds super useful. I hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks so much for sharing.
Tina
4 Raymond Chua // Jan 10, 2008 at 12:50 am
Thanks for the plugins recommendation.
I have installed and do all the setting for WP-DB-Backup plugin.
However, until today, I have not received any email from this plugin.
I’m looking for solution now and I hope this is the place I’m looking for.
5 Francisco (Houston Wedding DJ) Perez // Jan 10, 2008 at 1:24 am
I just noticed that WP does that, I was not aware of it. I too, would love to be grateful to those who do leave comments on my blog, so I am in the process of installing this plugin.. Thanks
6 Never the Same River Twice // Jan 10, 2008 at 2:16 am
This is a great goodwill gesture, Mark. I’ve been debating in my mind (and on the Mastermind boards) whether to do this myself. Your actions, as well as the stunning announcements by Zen Habits and the Simple Dollar to rescind copyrights on the ENTIRE blogs has helped me rethink this issue.
If blogging is really going to be a community, we need to take steps like these to help each other out. Otherwise, the big bad corporate guys are going to win… again.
7 Sherrie St. Cyr // Jan 10, 2008 at 4:26 am
I did not realize that Wordpress automatically made links no-follow. I encourage comments, since I believe that fosters conversation and community. I’ll get that plug-in plugged in this week. Thanks for the information.
8 Anne-Marie // Jan 10, 2008 at 6:46 am
Keep us up to date on how the no follow goes. I’ve heard doing that increases your spam to the point that all you’re doing is deleting spam comments. But if not, I’ll probably do load the plugin too on my WP blog.
9 Karen (Karooch from Scraps of Mind) // Jan 10, 2008 at 8:27 am
This sounds like a great way to encourage comments Mark.
10 Case Stevens // Jan 10, 2008 at 9:38 am
Welcome to the club Mark!
Glad you decided to reward people who add value to your blog.
Just for the record, besides Akismet, Spam Karma is another great plugin to fight spam.
11 Mark // Jan 10, 2008 at 10:32 am
@Tina, Raymond: WP-DB_backup hasn’t sent me an email either, so I’m into the config panel to see if I’ve done something wrong. However I did change the WP internal date to my real time (GMT + 10) late yesterday, so maybe that’s the problem. I have it set to send a backup every day.
@Francisco, NTSRT, Sherrie, Karen: Thank you so much for your encouragement. It just seems like the right thing to do!
@Anne-Marie: Interestingly, there hasn’t yet been a single spam comment yet (touch wood). I guess there’s some lag between doing something like this and having the spam bots attack. Neither AWStats or Google Analytics show page views for this post yet (they are not real time) so I really have no idea yet how successful this strategy. But it does feel right
@Case: You’re welcome! And thanks for the recommendation. The levels of spam is something I will monitor closely, but right now there’s nothing been sent through. Maybe the availability of plugins like Akismet and Spam Karma has killed this spam strategy?
If spam levels get too high I will probably turn nofollow on and off irregularly, and let the BMMers know beforehand. That way there’s still link value for a period, and maybe I can fly below the spammer’s radar.
12 Raymond Chua // Jan 10, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the answer. Just a quick question for you.
Did you give the plugin the 777 permission to write in your /wp-content directory?
I think that’s the main problem I encounter. Is it safe to give it 777 permission (I mean safe from hacker).
Thanks again.
13 Cindy // Jan 11, 2008 at 3:19 am
Thanks for the information. Being a non-techie, I need all the advice that I can receive.
14 Sherri Joubert // Jan 11, 2008 at 5:58 am
Great post! I use the dofollow plugin and it seems to work pretty well. Along with Askimet I don’t end up with spam in the comments on my sites. Before I found “dofollow” I set comments to dofollow manually for each post and it was a pain.
One of my sites has attracted a considerable amount of spam, and Askimet grabs all of it and puts it in a list under comments to sift through. It automatically deletes anything I don’t delete manually after a couple of weeks.
15 Case Stevens Marketing // Jan 11, 2008 at 7:47 pm
>>Tina, Raymond: WP-DB_backup hasn’t sent me an email either,
Of course you’ve set the variables under the Backup tab in Manage, so that the Wordpress cron will be able to send emails.
The reason for not sending MAY be, that the database is too large for your email client to handle.
Empty Akismet files (MyPHPAdmin) and all other redundant database info that you may have and try again.
>>777 permission
NEVER, ever give a directory 777 or you will open to even amateur hackers.
There’s always a way around this and if there isn’t, don’t use it.
I’ve had my website closed for this. Don’t let it happen to you.
16 Craig Harper // Jan 12, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Hey Mark,
Great blog!
Found you over at Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind group.
Thanks for the heads up on “nofollows”.
Craig
17 Mark // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:35 am
@Raymond: No, I keep all my directories at the default 755, and all my files at 644. When I need to do changes (often
) I change the specific file properties, fiddle about until I get the desired changes working, then change them back to 644. To do this I use FireFTP, which is a Firefox plugin (and a great FTP client, BTW).
The WP-DB-Backup plugin has two sections - the top one is for writing the backup into your wp-content directory, & the bottom one of for emailing the backup file to you. This second one is the one I use, & I can report that it works perfectly! I now have 4 or 5 backups sitting in my gmail archives.
One thing I haven’t done yet (this is important) is to attempt a restore from one of the backups. I’ll report on this when I get it tested successfully!
18 Mark // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:40 am
@Sherri: Yes I’ve been lucky here as well, just logged in after a weekend away from the PC and zero spam. They haven’t found me yet!
19 Mark // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:43 am
@Case: It started working for me - the problem was simply that I changed the WP time from the default (GMT) to my local time (GMT +10), and that added a 10 hour delay to the process. As per my response to Raymond, the next step is to try a restore on a brand new domain to see if it all works end to end.
20 Mark // Jan 14, 2008 at 10:44 am
@Craig: Thanks very much for visiting. I’m only a recent member to Yaro’s BMM & loving what I’ve seen so far.
21 Raymond Chua // Jan 14, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Hi Case Stevens Marketing,
Thanks for your advice.
I appreciate it.
22 Sol Lederman // Jan 15, 2008 at 1:18 am
Nice gesture - the do follow thing. I’ve been thinking about doing that on my blog as well. Thanks for leading the way!
Sol - fellow Blog Mastermind Member
23 Sol Lederman // Jan 15, 2008 at 1:20 am
p.s. There are directories out there that advertise do follow blogs. It’d be worth being included in those.
24 ShariV // Jan 15, 2008 at 9:35 am
Apparently Google is penalizing sites for not using no-follow on text links. I don’t understand the logic behind it, but there’s quite a bit that’s been said on this topic lately, some of it directly from Google. So on one hand, I’m more than a bit leery of adding a plugin that allows links to be followed. But on the other, I’d really like to reward commenters with a followed link back to their site. I’m on the fence … not really sure which way to go yet.
Thanks for the info on the robots meta plugin. It sounds like it could be a useful addition to my blog.
25 Mark // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:17 am
@ShariV: I haven’t heard of this, and it would surprise me if they do this. Google relevancy algorithm is based on links passing “value”, whatever that means, to the linked pages. Nofollow is a technique that breaks the value chain, designed to destroy the business model of link farms and spam blog/ forum comments.
ASFAIK, Google simply processes nofollow links as it finds them. They have other means to identify and penalise link farms; I don’t know how they handle comments. But also bear in mind that link value is a vague thing, and it’s unlikely that all, or even most, links to a website pass any value at all.
One other point - since installing the NOFF plugin I haven’t had a single spam comment (touch wood), so the spam threat just hasn’t eventuated!
26 Mark // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:17 am
@Sol: I’ve heard about those directories but not yet looked for them. Good suggestion!
27 ShariV // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:59 am
@Mark: I should have checked my sources before posting as I’ve taken something out of context. The Google penalty for not using no-follow has to do with paid links, not blog comments. So, you’re absolutely right, and although I’m embarrassed, I’m glad that’s cleared up! I’m off the fence and will be making sure that my blog’s comments can be followed. Thanks!
28 Mark // Jan 16, 2008 at 9:50 am
@ShariV: No worries :-). There was a kerfuffle (love that word) a few weeks ago about websites being penalised for carrying paid links, so I guess that’s what you’re referring to? And welcome to the NOFF world.
Today I’ll be following Sol’s advice & finding those “follow” directories. I’ll put them in a post as I find them.
29 Thirty DoFollow Social Booking Sites | Stratify Pty Ltd // Jan 16, 2008 at 2:49 pm
[…] is a quick and dirty followup to my NoFollowFree (NOFF) post of a few days ago. I just found a list of social bookmarking sites that do NOT enforce the […]
30 Susan Sabo // Jan 18, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Mark — my first visit to you website. From what I just read I’ll be back regularly. Thanks for putting this option on the table so we can decide to use it or not with some good background.
31 Mark // Feb 18, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hi everyone,
I’m experimenting with the impact of the NOFF plugin in tool bar page rank… as you can see the TBPR of this site has dropped from 4 to 0, and I’d like to ascertain whether this plugin is the cause. I will be writing a proper post later today to tell you what steps I’m taking, but I wanted to get this into the comment thread of this post.
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