Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 - 3 Comments
I’ve just installed a new spam protection plugin called RSBS created by Neo Geek, it’s pretty clever, yet works so simply.
If you have Javascript turned on then you know all you need to, everything works automatically.
When you enter a comment the radiobox “This is not spam” is automatically clicked, you comment gets posted and I remain spam free!
If you do happen to have javascript disabled then be sure to tick “This is not spam” and your comment will be accepted.
So how does it work? Well basically it makes sure your actually at my site when you make a comment rather than using a remote script.
I’m going to test it out for a coulpe days, if all goes well I will add the plugin to my other blogs as well.
Have a go in the comments section below, I’m sure Neo Geek would like to know if you break it or have any issues too.
Want to put it on your own blog? Download it here
Edit - Neo Geek took on some of my suggestions in version 0.4, so if you have javascript turned on you won’t even see the radiobox, its all automatic!
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 - 10 Comments
I’ve been getting back into blogging in a big way at the moment, but I’ve not been sure where to direct my energy.
So here’s a new regular section coming to Teabass: The Blog Review
The idea of the Blog review is to highlight some of my favorite blogs around the net, including personal, corporate and tech blogs.
I’ll put some of the things I like and some of the bits I don’t and maybe a suggestions or two at the end.
First up is PaulStamatiou.com
Paul’s Blog is a tech blog with news, reviews and guides and a regular read of mine.
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+ Paul has his finger on the pulse of Web2.0, he’s got a review of every new app within minutes of it being released, I usually get myself back up to speed by reading is blog if I have a few days away from the net.
+ According to Feedburner Paul has over 3400 subscribers, there is a good community around the site, if you have a question or problem then posting a comment will usually get you a helpful answer or three if Paul doesn’t beat his own followers to it!
+ I always consider the look of a blog, no matter how good the content is, if the site is difficult to read, use or just butt ugly then I tend to leave it be.
Fortunatly Paul’s site doesn’t have this problem, he’s gone through a number of themes all based around the blue and white style with the emphasis on the content.
It’s worked, the site looks and reads great too.
- I do hate to be negative, but it wouldn’t be much of a blog review if I didn’t say something negative!!
The only thing I can fault on Paul’s site is the homepage, you only get to see the first Paragraph or two of each of his posts, and there are never any images or pictures apart from the logos on the sidebar.
I suspect this is so he can track the stats and readership better on every post as you have to click on the link to read the post or read it via his Feedburner RSS.
Other than that PaulStamatiou.com is a great blog and remains one of my favourites.
Suggestion: How about showing the whole of the post recent post on the homepage, this would bring more pictures to the homepage
As well as not requiring regular readers to delve into your site and new visitors get an instant hit of what your posts are like.
Keep up the good work Paul!
Any suggestions for the next Blog Review?
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 - 2 Comments
Full Res Version Here
The best crop circle I’ve ever seen, what a great way to promote Firefox!
Via Digg
Monday, August 14th, 2006 - 3 Comments
I’ve been collecting loads of links over the past few months, and just never got round to posting them. I’ve found them in all kinds of places, some are from Digg, but most are just cool or useful pages I’ve found while floating around.
The catch… no descriptions, you’ll have to dive in and see what they are!
Sunday, August 13th, 2006 - No Comments
I’m going to be upgrading Lauren’s site within the next week.
We may have broken up, but we are still great friends and me being the kind web developer I am, I felt like Laurenf.net needs a bit of sprucing up.
I have a few things planned for it.
The first is moving it onto Ruby on Rails to allow Lauren to upload her own photographs, I’m also going to put in a contact form much like the ones on Teabass and AOR and the other change looks a little like this:
That is only somthing I threw together in photoshop, but you get the idea. I’m going to try my hardest not to make it look cartoony, which most of my stuff seems to be like at the moment!
Should help me get to grips with Adobe Illustrator too, which I still find pretty frustrating to use.
Why did I post this?
Because I would like any other suggestions as to how I could improve the site, any thoughts on what I could add or improve whilst still keeping the clean style and obviously Lauren has to like it too!
