Visualization example

Here’s another interesting example of visualizing information for users. In this example, News.com fits top 15 headlines into a square area. The color of the box demonstrates how recent the article is, while the size demonstrates the popularity of the article.

Footnote symbol order

I received a reward program credit card application from Fidelity Investments over the weekend. As with any such application, reading the footnotes is critical to understanding just what is included in the marketing promises. I also spent many years working on such acquisition applications, so I have a morbid curiosity to read these boring things (or I’m just a glutton for punishment).

All the obscure use of footnotes in this one just made my head hurt. Six-panel brochures are hard to navigate as is, but the writer/reviewers did a poor job footnoting the details. There was no consistency or recognizable pattern. For example, the first inside panel cites in the following order: §§, **, *, †. I don’t know what reference manual they used. More likely, it was a marketing intern or other inexperienced, young professional.

Chicago Manual used to be the gold standard, but is more and more ignored either because of lack of experience or because software application programmers set up defaults that didn’t follow a proper guide.

Here’s the generally accepted order to follow:

1	asterisk	*
2	dagger	†
3	double dagger	‡
4	section symbol	§
5	parallel lines	||
6	paragraph	¶
7	number sign	#
	restart using doubles
8	two asterisks	**
9	two daggers	††
10	two double daggers	‡‡
	etc.

Many, myself included, are tempted to follow a eye-pleasing *, **, †, ††, but it’s not correct. Just resist temptation and follow the correct format. While your at it, be sure to correct others as well. Standards and consistency are important.

Hope you find this helpful.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Handy domain name research and suggestion tools

I have previously written about how to choose domain names to register.

Pretty much any domain name registrar Web site has a recommendation tool. I want to highlight two research tools I really like:

PC Names Domain Search — “A free site dedicated to developing the most advanced tools for finding domains”

PC Names has a clean interface and uses AJAX to display available domain names in real time as you type. You can search on available dictionary words, 3 letter domains, 4 letter domains. You can also allow it to recommend alternate keywords (a thesaurus-like function).

ABAKUS KeywordDomain — “Save time finding that ideal keyword rich domain name”

Abakus allows the user to enter up to four keywords for various Top Level Domains (TLDs), then generate domain name suggestions.

Both allow WhoIs lookups without annoying challenge mechanisms that require you to type in text from a randomly displayed image.

Definitely check out these domain name tools the next time you are brainstorming domain names. They can save you a lot of time and aggravation.

I hope you find these useful.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Tips to stop blog comment spam on WordPress blogs

I enjoy publishing my blogs using WordPress. A few short months after switching to WordPress from Blogger, I began to get a steady trickle of comment spam. Just plain garbage not related to any of my articles. These comments contain URLs for porn, prescription medication, online casinos, loan providers, insurance providers and more. Some just have random characters and a URL, while others might have eight rows of URLs.

Still others include fake compliments in broken English, such as “Great site. I like you say. Go pornpalace123.xhfshds.com.”

I get annoyed and frustrated because I would like legitimate reader feedback and I don’t want to turn off real visitors who see these junk links. So my writing hobby also requires constant vigilance.

Also, this nonsense messes with my traffic stats. I want to have reliable numbers, not artificially inflated with spammer visits.

What’s most bizarre is that the guys/gals posting this crap don’t know that comment spam is no longer effective in improving their Web site’s natural search results, because it’s typically not relevant and the no-follow tag tells the major search engines not to index hyperlinks in comments. These spammers are not following current Search Engine Optimization methodology and tactics. I guess they didn’t get the memo at the last Spammer-con.

Tips for WordPress blog publishers:

• Regularly update the Comment Moderation filter with keywords you want to screen for and temporarily hold in a queue for your review.
• Regularly update the Comment Blacklist filter — extreme foul language or comment spam subjects like casino, prescription names, sex acts, etc.
• Temporarily block IP address ranges that repeatedly post spam over time. (Warning! Only advanced users should consider this extreme tactic.)
• Install a plug-in that challenges the comment poster to either answer a math problem or type in the text displayed in an image. That helps slow down automated spambots.
• Activate Akismet plug-in to move possible comment spam into a queue for your review.
• Install and activate Bad Behavior plug-in to block known spammers from accessing your blog.

I regularly update the built-in WordPress Comment Moderation filter (”Options > Discussion”) with various keywords and domain names to help flag comment spam and put it in a review queue.

While I’m doing that, I also update the Comment Blacklist with every dirty word and spelling/misspelling variation I find in comment spam.

At times I’d turn off the comments function for a few days to see if I could make the spammers give up and move on. But after I turned the function on again, the spam returned quickly. Presumably automated spam bots are the cause.

I tried implementing a challenge mechanism that requires the comment poster to type in the letters/numbers displayed in a unique image. But that didn’t have much affect and broke unexpectedly a few times.

I activated the WordPress Akismet plug-in about 3 months ago. Since then, Askimet has caught 977 and 351 spam posts on Chaos365.com and NewMediaSandbox.com, respectively. It automatically puts comments in it’s own queue (”Manage > Akismet Spam”) and I review to confirm there are no legitimate reader posts. What’s nice about this tool is that it draws from a library of data to help flag possible spam posts. Then when I submit what I consider to be spam, it combines with other user-provided data so all users benefit.

Akismet has caught 977 spam for you since you first installed it.
You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day. :)

Suddenly, the first week of November I got several hundred spam messages in my Akismet queue in less than a weeks time. I decided it was time to find a tool to block spammers before they could even post.

I’ve carefully used the Comment Blacklist to restrict specific IP address ranges that repeatedly abuse my blog. I’ve even updated .htaccess file a few times. But realizing that IP addresses may change, I edit these only temporarily as a short-term solution to try to make spammers/spam bots move on.

Obviously, this is becoming to much work. I needed an automated solution. The plug-in I found is called Bad Behavior. It essentially prevents identified spammers from accessing the blog. Period.

I installed Bad Behavior on a Sunday morning on my two primary blogs. By Friday morning (5 days later), it reported that it had blocked 2,381 access attempts on Chaos365.com and 198 access attempts on NewMediaSandbox.com. I can check (”Options > Bad Behavior”) to see how many attempts are reported for the past 7 days.

In the same period since installing Bad Behavior, each day I also checked the Akismet plug-in to see if anything is in my queue awaiting confirmation and I am happy to report it has been zero each day for both blogs.

There are other popular WordPress plug-in solutions, such as Spam Karma, that work well for many bloggers. But your best strategy to get started should be trial and tweak, and add on additional tactics carefully. Research these solutions I’ve mentioned (Akismet, Bad Behavior, Spam Karma), check out other options available at WordPress.org, and decide what may be right for you. Just don’t activate too many simultaneously because you might create unexpected conflicts that could prevent legitimate visitors from accessing or contributing to your Web site.

In summary, WordPress owners should:

• Carefully identify keywords not related to your blog content that you want to moderate or block altogether.
• Install and activate the latest Akismet and Bad Behavior plug-ins.
• Fine tune as necessary so you keep the good posts in and the garbage out.
• Keep publishing!

I hope you find this useful.
Good luck!
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at NewMediaSandbox.com and Chaos365.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Handy greek text (lorem ipsum…) generator

Filling out wire frames, mock ups and rough layouts with dummy “greek” text is usually a pain. First I have to find a block of text, then format it the way I need to use it.

I just found this handy Lorem ipsum generator, Lipsum.com. Simply define how much text you need in terms of words, paragraphs, lists or bytes, then you get nicely formated text ready for you to copy and paste into your work.

Only limitation I could think of was that it didn’t allow you to select all upper case, but that can always be formatted in the application you are pasting the text into.

Although I’m often tempted to use real text examples in wire frames and layouts, I usually decide based on the client I’m working with. Some people are too literal and focus on the minutia details. In those cases, I’d rather use “lorem ipsum” text so I can keep the person focused on the main goal of the work being presented.

I hope you also find this useful.
-Roland

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