With Valentines Day fast approaching I thought I would use the holiday to inaugurate the free template listings that the SuperBlog Directory blog will be providing going forward. If you are a template designer for any of the various blogging platforms out there and have a totally free template you would like me to promote, you can use my contact form to request that it be listed.

To start things off I have come across this free Valentines Day themed Wordpress Template dubbed “Pink White Valentine” with loads of pink to go around. The designer states that it is compatible with Wordpress 2.2 and higher, is widget ready, and is valid XHTML and CSS.

Live demo | Download

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You’ve got your brand spankin’ new blog, a great template, and you’ve added loads of great posts. So why isn’t anyone commenting? While not necessarily a gauge of how you are doing, in fact some turn comments off completely, getting people to comment on your posts is a goal of many bloggers.

So now that we’ve determined that many bloggers want people to comment, how is that goal reached? Besides the obvious of writing helpful thought provoking or controversial posts, giving potential commenter’s an incentive is the next best option. With that in mind, I found a plugin for Wordpress does just that.

NoFollow Free allows you to remove the “nofollow” tag that normally accompanies links in user comments which in turn gives those who want to leave comments an incentive to do so, a search engine friendly link or links back to their own site. While this type of plugin is not new, NoFollow Free is a good choice because of the various options it gives you when setting it up with various user selectable situations including but not limited to:

- replacing nofollow on author/text link
- replacing nofollow on registered author/text link
- replacing nofollow only if the visitor or the registered users had X previous comments
- putting back the nofollow if user defined blacklist words are matched

It also comes with an image band that you can place in your header to proclaim to your visitors that your comments are now “NoFollow Free” because what good is this plugin if nobody knows you use it right? Give it a try, I am.

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While not necessary in order to use the service, StatCounter has announced a new Wordpress plugin that makes adding the required code for their web counter even easier. Before the plugin, adding the needed code required at least some knowledge of web programming and access to some kind of HTML editor. Now all you need is a free StatCounter account and a way to upload the plugin to your Wordpress installation.

Complete details on how to get the plugin and even a procedure to add StatCounter for those using Wordpress.com’s hosting service can be found on the StatCounter blog.

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If you have run a blog for more than 5 minutes you have been made aware of just how bad the comment spammers can be. My one main blog averages 50-75 a day. Fortunately, Wordpress comes with a pretty good spam tool pre-installed called Akismet. While it is an excellent tool that I have found catches 99% of the spam on my site, you still need to weed through the spam wasteland the Akismet leaves behind to make sure that nothing got caught that shouldn’t have or at a minimum to delete the various Viagra and porn comments from your queue. Enter a fairly new tool that takes care of the aforementioned problem.

WP-SpamFree aims to prevent the major source of comment spam from even getting to your site, the automated spambots. The author of WP-SpamFree knew from experience that the majority of these spambots couldn’t handle cookies or javascript so he came up with a seamless way to take advantage of that weakness by making the comment procedure include these 2 features that most human web browsers have activated by default.

WP-SpamFree isn’t designed to take the place of Akismet as even the plugin author admits that while less than 1% of spambots can handle javascript, some indeed do and either way trackback spam is a completely different animal which bypasses the comment form altogether. Because of that he recommends you use it along with Akismet to catch virtually all Spam from the spambots and so far from my unscientific testing, it works like a champ.

As I said earlier, my primary blog averages 50-75 spam comments a day, well over 15,000 to date. So far in the 3 days I have had the plugin installed, Akismet has had to catch nothing, 3 days without a single spam comment. Of course spammers are a crafty lot and I am sure they will find a way to circumvent this plugin, especially if it becomes popular. Until then though, adding this to Akismet on your Wordpress blog is a 1-2 spam prevention punch that is hard to beat.

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Lately I have become more and more diligent in enforcing certain submission requirements to the dismay of some that have been submitting. Despite what some might think, I am not having a bad day nor am I picking on anyone. With the recent crackdown by Google on directories, owners have had to become something more than just a place that provides webmasters with links or they face becoming irrelevant due to the dreaded Google penalty.

So what exactly does that mean? For one directories need to provide something useful for real users, and by that I mean those other than webmasters or bloggers. Before the latest Google “wild hair”, most directories rarely if ever provided a resource for the general browsing public. Webmasters submitted their sites and if they get some link juice from the directory they were happy, any visits received from a directory was a bonus that was normally not expected and rarely happened. The better directories have come to this realization and are now trying to be more than just a link farm.

What does that mean to those submitting here? As has been noticed by some, I am moving towards the DMOZ model of submission reviews. If you stuff your site title or description with keywords, you can guarantee it will be rejected immediately. Site descriptions must actually describe what your site is about, if by reading your description I am unable to determine what your blog discusses, It will be rejected.

Even given a good description and title, ensure you have some posting history. Nothing is more annoying to those looking for types of blogs than finding out about it here and clicking through to a dead link or going to a blog that hasn’t been updated since the Reagan administration. I have received a lot of complaints about that requirement but proving to me that you are serious about your blog by showing some history of updating it means that it will be less likely to turn into a dead link later on. That is also shown by those newer bloggers willing to submit as a featured listing which is why that requirement is waved for premium submitters. Lastly pick the most relevant category. Site users go to a category to find blogs that are relevant to what they are looking for, not for sites submitted to a category because it has page rank or is closer to the home page. Depending on my mood, sites submitted to the wrong category can also be rejected.

Finally I thought I would close with a comment on the benefit of upgrading to a featured listing. Besides the obvious of putting your site above all regular listings and the extra exposure generated by appearing randomly on our home page you also can submit your RSS feed. This feature gives your listing links to 5 more pages on your site along with the text from the article being linked to. As this site has matured, A much larger portion of the visitors are coming directly to the detail pages from search engines because of those post links. They then click through to your blog which if you think about it is what directories were supposed to do in the first place, get visitors to come to your site.

If all you are looking for is a link, feel free to submit your keyword spammed submission to the various directories. I am sure some if not many will accept them. If you want more, spend some time on your submission and write a description and title that would benefit someone looking to find what you offer. Those submissions are welcomed here.

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It’s not like bloggers have the greatest of reputations within the conventional media as it is, the latest stunt by a well know tech blog at the just completed Consumer Electronics Show surely won’t help things.

Gizmodo thought it would be funny to use a TV B Gone remote to shut down various displays on the show floor and during presentations. A lot of people put a lot of time and money into making CES go off without a hitch and Gizmodo single handedly destroyed all that work. And the people at CES have a hard enough job as it is without someone mucking up the works.

Of course the CEA wasn’t impressed by the stunt that at one point shut down the monitors in the middle of a presentation at the Motorola booth.

We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion.

Looks like there might be an available pass for next year’s CES. Tech bloggers, the line forms to the right, just leave your pranks at home.

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A question came up over at DP regarding whether or not you could sell your Blogger blog. Other than the usual “it’s your blog you can do with it what you wish” comments, wrong by the way (see bullet# 7), or the various other more or less helpful responses a very important question still remains. If you plan to be a serious blogger or to make your blog a brandable commodity should you even consider a free blog provider like Blogger? For me the answer to that question is a resounding, it depends.

While that sounds like a cop-out, the reason for it revolves around what you plan to do. Personally, I have always hosted my blogs on my own domains that for the most part relied on Wordpress for my platform of choice but that might not be the best for some individuals. Registering your own domain name, finding a reliable web host, and then getting your choice of blogging software installed and running is not a task for some people not to mention the fact that it can be a bit spendy for some. Free web hosts take all that hard work and expense out of the equation. Spend a few minutes signing up, pick a domain name and template, and you are ready to blog. Along with the aforementioned benefits of a free Blogger/Wordpress blog, you can add that your site software will always be up to date and you will have pretty much limitless bandwidth (not really but close) which could lead you to believe that your choice is a no brainer. Hold that thought.

Some of the downsides of free hosted blogs.

1. Ownership Part 1 - You spend months/years building up a readership but what happens if sometime down the road that free site isn’t free anymore or what if your site gets shut down for some reason? You either must move it to another free host or rebuild on your own domain.

2. Ownership Part 2 - As the DP poster found out, while you do own your content, you do not own your domain. What good is spending all that time branding your site only to have it be pretty much worthless when and if you wish to get rid of it.

3. Under the Hood - While free hosts like Blogger and Wordpress.com offer many look and feel options, you are limited to what they offer and can only do what your limited access to the “under the hood” functions allow. If you want custom programming or special features, you are usually out of luck.

4. Professional Appearance - This is more of a branding issue but depending on what your market might be, having your site hosted with a free service doesn’t always portray the professional appearance you might hope to present. Blogger/Wordpress blogs have the earned reputation of being a spammer haven. Is that something that would affect your brand?

If none of the bullet points above bother you, by all means go the free route. But if you have the limited resources needed to get up and running with your own domain, save yourself the  potential hassle in the future and start out on your own domain. Like I said, it depends…

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