WordPress Does Not Search Comments

I just found out that if I use the search box on my blog WordPress does a great job of searching all the posts. But it does not seem to search the comments attached to them.

I saw that Barnes & Noble have announced their eBook reader – the Nook. I recalled that I’d posted something about it but could not remember where. I tried searching for “Barnes & Noble” or just plain “Barnes” but WordPress found nothing.

Then I remembered I mentioned it on a comment to a post about the Kindle reader. I searched for “Kindle” and soon found it.

I guess it is a load more work for WordPress to index comments but I was a little bit disappointed.

Now of course this post will appear when I search for “Barnes”.

More Widgets

I have added some more WordPress widgets to the right sidebar on the blog.

Now I have:

• Search this blog. This works very well for any text I have entered. It’s why I think Post Tags are of limited value.
• Calendar View. I am proud that I have added at least one post per day since I started this blog in June 2009. I admit i have cheated a bit. If I know I am going to be away and off the internet for a few days I schedule some posts in advance. WordPress is good like that.
• My 3 Latest Flickr Photos. From my Flickr photostream. I like the little thumbnails Flickr makes and WordPress displays.
• My Favourite Links. (Spelled correctly – none of this “favorite” stuff.) This took the most work. The default is a “Blogroll” of favourite blogs, but I have broadened it to favourite links of all types. I am still adding links here.
• My Categories. A cloud (font size proportional to frequency) of the WordPress categories in the blog. I have too many Misc. Lazy!
• My Tags. Similar for the tags I add to each post. For categories and tags you can click on one and WordPress displays all messages with that category or tag. I guess adding this makes Tags more useful.
• Spam Avoided. This is for information. WordPress uses technology from a company called to quarantine comments that are thought to be spam. For me it has been 100% effective with no false positives. I think Akismet is great.

WordPress has support for their widgets here.

I’m still learning about this subject. Please feel free to comment on my choices and also on my rather boring theme. I think it wastes a lot of screen space.

http://akismet.com/faq/

Trying Bigger Pictures

I’ve noticed that the pictures I have posted that link to Flickr look rather small when displayed here. Flickr automatically makes pictures of different sizes so you have a choice.

I was careful that the size of picture I selected does not overflow into the margins of the blog. That looks very bad. But perhaps I was too conservative.

I have edited some posts to use the “Medium” sized picture from Flickr rather than the “Small”. Flickr’s sizes are not constant: they depend on the size of the picture that I uploaded (of course).

So now I have

(Width = 500, Height = 533)

replacing

(Width = 240, Height = 160).

The maximum width looks like 500.

Some photographers use a different design that maximizes screen width to show their pictures to best advantage.

For example Jeff Friedl’s Blog has nothing in the left margin and much larger, framed photos with a black background.

Leo Laksi has a WordPress blog (so I have the same design “theme” choices). His pictures are much bigger AND they are nicely framed. He uses a white background.

As I admitted when I started this blog in June – the design is boring. Maybe I need a rethink.

Or am I thinking too much?

Tagging is Pointless

In WordPress that is.

Lightroom calls them keywords, WordPress calls them tags, but they are the same thing: values applied to information (with no type).

What I mean is that WordPress has a good full-text search feature so if your blog posts are mostly text it will find any post with a term whether it is a Tag or not.

I can’t see any point in adding Tags to my posts. I don’t think it makes them any easier to find.

Of course pictures in Lightroom are not so easy to search. It would so great if Lightroom could ‘recognize’ a Hino AK bus or a Boeing 747 in a picture as I can. Then I could throw all my keywords away. There has been work done on image recognition but isn’t in Lightroom yet.

I wonder if they are something that search engines look for? No – that’s too easy to game. The search engines favour content over probably-manipulated metadata.

Somebody tell me I am wrong!

WordPress Spam Comments

Fortunately I only get them a few times a week. The spamming user agents are clever that they don’t blast multiple comments on every post any more.

This is a particularly egregious one that WordPress caught:

Spam Comment

I had a couple of more subtle spam comments earlier this week. They appeared to be a one-line compliment on a post: “This is very interesting” or “This blog rocks!”. The latter is inappropriate for my style of blogging, whatever this blog does is definitely doesn’t rock!

There were no obvious problems with the comment – no apparent links or mountains of keywords. But the author’s web site (an optional field when you add a comment) was a get-rich-quick scheme. If I hadn’t taken a look I would have approved the comment. I like compliments, even if they are content-free.

WordPress implements a policy where the first comment by a user is automatically held for moderation by the blog owner. If I approve the comment then subsequent comments from that user are approved automatically.

Thus a way to game their system is to make a “That’s a great point!” comment without a link. I’ll approve it and then the spammer can add others without me getting suspicious.

I think I can configure WordPress to make all comments wait for moderation. That would be a lot of trouble given the hundreds comments I get per day.

Annoying.

For Security Reasons …

This phrase really annoys me when I see it. If I ever run a company again I will fire any employee who uses it. It is today’s all purpose, supposedly un-challengeable excuse for anything.

Click for a larger picture

And don’t get me started about “you need …“.

In this case I subscribed to email updates to comments on a WordPress blog post I commented on. I received an email message with a link to click to confirm I’d subscribed.

The link must have expired or there’s a bug in WordPress, for I got this response each time I tried.

Sorry, I am not that interested, and I don’t need to do anything, thank you very much.