The single best way though, to solve comment spam, is to use Akismet - its core bundled from 2.2 - and easily installable as a plugin otherwise.
You’ll need to sign up for an API key from Wordpress.com - which is free, and easy to do. You’ll also get a blog at Wordpress.com, but of course, you don’t need to use it.

There are other options for solving comment spam, but by and large, I recommend Akismet because its by far the easiest and most inobtrusive I’ve used.

Akisment is now bundled as standard with the WordPress core - so it’s as simple as activating it within your dashboard.

What’s your favorite spam solution and why?

We’ll be back in as soon as we can work out WHY it went sidewards.

D Kai Wilson, and team

**EDIT**

We’re putting back some of the posts, in line with our new overview of the site - and removing some, to support that overview - some will be reposted with updates, some won’t.

Thanks for your patience!

Hi there!
Ctrl+f5 is the windows browser refresh, its not quite the same as what your old host means. However, its hard, sometimes, to tell when you’ve moved.

There’s a simple way to check whether you’ve moved. Firstly you can check your nameservers (after changing them) at http://dnsreport.com - this site will let you see lots of information about your server that is hosting you.

Once you’ve made sure your nameservers are swapped over, you can run the following on your own desktop and you’ll be able to update your DNS at your end (though, note, this doesn’t always work)

Go to start - run - cmd
It will open up a DOS style box -
Type ipconfig /flushdns
(there is a space between the /(slash) and ipconfig
It should give you the following message:
Successfully flushed the DNS resolver cache

Type ipconfig/registerdns
(there is a space between the /(slash) and the end of ipconfig)
It will give you another message that tells you that it is re-registering your DNS and that you’ll see any errors in a log.

This will (hopefully) allow you to get any updates to the DNS cache and flush the files that stores these - giving you a better chance of seeing whether you’ve moved to a new server.

NOTE - there’s one extra step to this in Vista.

To do this in Vista, you must be ‘running’ your command line box as an administrator.  To do that, go into your start menu –>All programs–>Accessories –> Command prompt and RIGHT CLICK on your command prompt icon, to select the option ‘run as administrator’.  If you cannot see this option, you may need to log in as the administrator, if you can.

If you would like to use this article as a reprint - please visit D Kai Wilson’s ‘how do I refresh my dns’ at Ezinearticles.

Tough times
The tough times require a bit of forethought. Every business I’ve consulted with recently on how to prepare for the downturn has done one small thing.
They’ve taken a ten percent ‘take home’ cut.
In realistic terms - this means taking $10 from every $100 and putting it away. You should do this for every member of staff you employ - even if this means paying them slightly more.
A VA that earns $40 an hour, should automatically put $4 away, before tax. These ’savings’ are then your buffer against hard times, while you gear your business, or supplement a lower income (though, of course, remember, you’ll still get taxed on any income you draw ;))
Booking in advance and client incentives work in some businesses, but most of the time, some prudent belt tightening helps out more than looking for clients, or pressurising old ones.

The good times - the best times
Other than putting away ’surplus’ wages + your 10%, it’s important to remember that you can hire casual workers, that you trust. My article business has casual freelancers on a mailing list - we post our overflow work to them, and I’m part of one or two lists like that myself, just so that when the tough times do hit, I’ve got another fallback.
Hiring freelancers is easy, but make sure you audition them, you pay them what they and you consider to be a fair rate, and you’ve got a basic contract in place. We’re publishing a couple of basic contracts at http://wahm20.com in a couple of days, for people to use and modify. Most of all though, remember that even if they are brilliant, you also have to be pretty good - you have to check their work before passing it to a client.

Whether you’re in feast or famine, freelancing and working from home is often the most rewarding job you can have.
Enjoy it!

D Kai Wilson is the head writer at http://wahm20.com - Wahm 2.0, a site dedicated to helping work at home parents understand Web 2.0 technologies and how to navigate the mine-field that is online working.

Web 2.0 technologies and how to navigate the mine-field that is online working.

A sidebar is a section of your blog at the left/right/bottom of your blog that lets you put links, ‘widgets’ and more into it.  If a blog were a house, the  sidebars would be the walls.  They shouldn’t change much, and should contain navigational links to your posts, archives, recent comments and anything else you think people should see when visiting your blog.  They shouldn’t take the place of the content.

WordPress was developed to allow people to use a ‘drag and drop’ style of arranging thier sidebar - with text boxes for widget support.  To find your sidebar widgets, you need to log into your WordPress install and then find the Design (or THEME in pre 2.5 installs) and then look for widgets.
You might get an error message that says widgets aren’t enabled - or you might not see the ‘widget’ option at all - if that’s the case, check your plugins folder first, and make sure your sidebar widgets are enabled, and up to date.  If you can see they are active, you may have to check your theme - or contact someone that can.  Widgetising the sidebar isn’t complicated, but it can be fairly fiddly, so it’s always better to find a tutorial, or a professional that will do it for you.

We widgetise themes for $10 per theme - just contact us through our contact form.

Sidebar widget instruction and theme support (for themes that haven’t been wigetised (increasingly rare) - can be found at Automattic Widgets.

1) Is your blog somewhere they’d link to naturally - if they knew it existed?
The implied question here is if they already knew about your blog, and haven’t linked you, is there a reason for it?  Is your blog of the quality they would expect?  Is it in the same niche as them?
2) If they haven’t linked to you, will you be linking to them?
If someone has a more successful blog than you, it might take lots of link love before they’ll even mention you back - so contribute to thier blog as best you can.  Add to the conversation flow in the comments - link back to and expand on their most interesting points (and don’t feel you HAVE to agree with them either!) and remember - some people just won’t link to you.
3)Find other places to link to and hopefully be linked from.
If you’re obsessing over certain links from certain places, move on.  There’s dozens of places that you’ll be able to be linked from.

Once you’re blogrolled, don’t stop contributing and joining in.  Staying visible and engaging is one of the key elements of social networking and marketing.

Blogrolling someone is simply the act of adding them to your blogroll, which most commonly appears in the sidebar of a blog.
Blogrolls can be three links in length, or 100 - an optimal length is partially based on your community, but can be anywhere from 25 - 40.