For those new to blogging, it may help to explain that while email spam is targeted at you or me, comment spam is targeted at Google.

It’s a parasitic activity, aiming to get a better ranking on Google by linking your site to the spammer’s site via the comment. Hence the practice described dramatically as “Google bombing”.

As the WordPress.org Codex explains:

A spammer might have a site that sells a “mydrug” and wants to be at the top of a search for “mydrug” on Google, so to create the effect of a google bomb they leave comments on hundreds or thousands of weblogs linking to their site with the link text “mydrug”. They don’t really care if you see it, in fact they’d rather you didn’t because you would delete it, they just want the search engine to see it when they index your page.

What to do?

If your site is built on WordPress, the first thing to do is to make sure the Akismet plugin is activated.

The Akismet plugin developed and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, comes supplied with every WordPress installation.

I for one would not be without it. It does a terrific job in keeping this blog, for example, free of spam comments.

But you have to activate it. And for that you need to have an API key.  I got my API key from a site I set up on the WordPress-hosted platform at WordPress.com If you don’t have a WordPress.com blog and don’t feel a need for one, you can still get an API key by signing up, at no charge, for a WordPress.com account .

This is a non-trivial issue for any blogger

I just counted in the Akismet spam folder 18 spam comments on the one post I published here yesterday, 5 Things I Look for in a WordPress Theme. A genuine comment was let through as was my reply. All the spam comments had been picked up automatically by Akismet, so they never appeared on the blog. Typically they are illiterate or semi-literate and have little or nothing to do with the blog post in question.

These days, unless I go and look in the spam folder I don’t see many of these “comments”. That’s surely because Akismet learns from the blog owner’s or  administrator’s actions as indicating what he or she regards as spam.

When Akismet is still in the learning phase for your blog, you may see “comments” along the lines of the following examples taken from yesterday’s mini-blitz on the one blog post:

Great post. I used to be checking continuously this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely helpful information specifically the closing section I handle such information much. I was looking for this certain information for a long time. Thanks and best of luck.

Highly interesting post. You consistently publish a absorbing post. Thanks!

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

very cool blog. Plus for the article!

We are a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable information to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our entire community will likely be grateful to you.

Very interesting topic, regards for putting up.

Really impressed! Everything is very, very clear, open is a description of the problem.It contains the information.I wanted to let you know that I linked to your site with a dofollow links so visitors can come to see your blog.It is all very new to me and this article really opened my eyes,and I guess since I like reading your blog, others will too.You can find the link to your site here:

awesome blog excellent job

It would be funny if it wasn’t such a plague. I see blogs with this sort of comment and wonder if anyone is taking responsibility. It is such a bad look.

As well as having Akismet installed and active, you can moderate the comment stream using the various options provided in your WordPress Dashboard, under Settings -> Discussion.

Do you have any other tips for managing the comment spam issue?

Image credit: Blog with cockroaches photoshopped using the image Cockroach, by masterbutler, via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The complicated way usually involves stressing and getting blocked.

The simple way I call Writing for Grandma.

Going by the results of a search I just did on Google, a lot of us are trying to do it the complicated way – or just not doing it: my search on the term “bloggers block” (without the quote marks) drew fifty three million three hundred thousand results.

So if you get stuck on what or how to write, know you have company.

Now I fully realize there are all sorts of barriers that can come up if we really want to fret about creating content. Actually, I think I know most of them from having hidden behind one or other of them at one time or another, or had others speak to me of what blocked them.

Here are a few, actually twelve, that come to mind:

• I really don’t know enough about this topic
• Other people write much better, more interesting, more readable posts than I do
• I need to work on the layout of my blog, then I’ll get on to creating some content
• I can’t write
• I don’t have any ideas today
• I need to do all that SEO stuff and I don’t really understand it
• I’ve never been good at writing
• Someone said my posts are too long
• Someone said my posts are too short
• Someone told me I should have pictures in my posts and I don’t have any good ones
• Why would anyone want to read what I write?
• I have to do research on this and I don’t have time.

So what is this simple “Writing for Grandma” way?

Inspired by a story a very seasoned journalist and popular writer told me once about his grandma, I want to suggest a simple, stress-free way to create blog content.

My journalist friend was old school and he could make words sing. And having written a very successful column for a metropolitan daily, he knew deadlines and he knew how to compress and simplify. He told me part of the secret of his success. He said that as a fresh young reporter on a rural newspaper he had been called in by the editor and the conversation went like this:

“You got a grandmother, son?”

“Yes.”

“Well, write for her.”

He told me that after that, and even when he graduated to a city daily, if he got stuck, he would picture his grandma and tell the story in a way he thought she would like.

Now I don’t know about you, but both my grandmothers, may they rest in peace, would probably have made a valiant effort to listening to me if I had been talking in a foreign language, but they would have appreciated much more a plain-spoken story, in English, maybe with some opinion I held at the time and ideally with something in it to make them smile.

Like most grandmas, they wouldn’t have judged (or if they had, they would have kept it to themselves and smiled).

And they would have appreciated my sharing something with them that I thought was interesting or important, or maybe just some thoughts I was working through.

In other words, they are good, friendly, non-judgemental audiences for me to think of when I hit the keyboard.

So we don’t have to do in-depth research and we don’t have to send ourselves off to a writing school to be able to create bog content. We can just share a thought on something within the general range of topics of our blog and tell the story as straightforwardly as we can. And hopefully, when appropriate, with some humor.

Don’t “write blog posts” if you don’t want to do that. Write a note for your grandma. You know you’ll have at least one person genuinely liking your content.

Like to share a way you have found to keep the content creation process simple?

The ebook is no longer for sale but can be downloaded free of charge at this link.

Now I’m looking at doing a completely new ebook and have posted about that on my Des Walsh dot Com site.

I’m open to suggestions and ideas about just what such a guide would include, both essentially and optionally/desirably.

By the way, I realize I was floating a concept here along these lines just over a year ago, but now I want to have asy fresh a look as I can at the subject.

In the meantime, on the basis of having to start somewhere, I have drawn up a draft list of chapter themes, as follows:

• Know why you are blogging (business purpose)
• Think strategically – and “socially” (blog as part of broader social business strategy)
• Set up your blog (using WordPress.org – noting other platforms available)
• Start blogging (drafting, posting, tagging, using video etc)
• Build connections (comment on other blogs, cross link to Facebook, Twitter etc)
• Optimize your blog (search engine optimization basics)
• Monitor and measure (in relation to business purpose)

I welcome any suggestions you may like to offer.

My Des Walsh dot Com site as an example

Just the other week, with the aim of being able to communicate more effectively about my business focus and the services I offer, I used the static front page option to achieve a complete re-vamping of my Des Walsh dot Com site.

In other words, I changed the site structure, from the “blog-as-site” model in place since 2005, to make the front page more of a “portal” structure, with the blog as part of the overall site rather than as the front page.

In terms of basic WordPress functionality, that change was quite easy to make and there is a three step process set out in the WordPress codex.

Getting the new structure to function well took longer, but I finally got there and am pleased to say that people have been so far quite positive about the outcome.

A practical, economical way to set up a web site with a blog

Many business owners, other than WordPress experts and other longer term users of WordPress, seem to be quite unaware that you can re-structure your site this way so as to get an integrated, composite outcome – a “traditional” static website, a content management system and a blog, all with this free software.

And even if you step the game up a notch or two, the costs are very manageable, even for a very small business.

There is a plethora of free WordPress “themes” available. On the WordPress directory alone there are currently 1,361 such free themes listed and there have been over 31.7 million downloads. I have tried many of them, with varying degrees of satisfaction and frustration.

My main frustration with the free themes has been that as a non-techie I was too reliant on the theme developers helping me fix problems that arose and as the theme was provided free of charge there was a limit to how much help I could expect.

Go for premium: it won’t break the bank

These days, for anyone wanting a good looking, well-functioning business site – and support – I would always recommend a “premium” (i.e. paid) service, such as the iThemes Builder theme, which comes with a number of child themes in an array of different designs.

To give an idea of costs, a multi-use, one year license for the Builder theme (comes with an array of child themes and support) costs $97: you can use it on as many sites as you wish. We now use iThemes Builder for almost all of our sites, including this one.

The layout and style management tools give you a huge amount of scope for customization.

If you don’t want to do the setting up and customization yourself, there are third party providers who know the iThemes system and will do the installation and customization for you. The iThemes company itself provides a service I believe to be very competitive: site installation $100, customization $200. Then if you should want more customization they have a sliding scale of fees, based on a very reasonable $100 an hour.

Even if you choose another premium theme provider, those costs should give you a benchmark for what you might be willing to pay for themes and for setup and customization.

If you have any questions about all of this, I will do my best to answer.

My friend Ivan Walsh (no relation) has an excellent post on why the About page on our blog is very important, with some very practical advice on what should be on that page – and what should not be.

Of course, to be able to complete an About page we need to have a reasonable idea of what, indeed, our site is about. As that can change over time, we need to be sure our statement is up to date.

That’s certainly the case with this blog. In this post I track, as much as I sensibly can, my various attempts over the past six and a half years from when the blog was launched, to state what it was or is about, and share some thoughts about the future development of the site.

The process of checking back on earlier attempts to explain the site’s purpose has been made possible largely by the wonderful Wayback Machine at Archive.org. The Wayback Machine allows me to see many versions of the blog going back to when it started in 2004.

I can’t really recall precisely at this point in time why I chose the name “Thinking Home Business”. My recollection is that I wanted to make an implicit statement along the lines of this being a site where I would share thoughts about home based business – as distinct from many sites that promote various ways to make money from home in your jammies. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

So in my first post, in August 2004, I wrote:

This blog is my workspace and public journal for recording and organising my ideas, impressions, learnings and observations about home based business.

Then at some point early on, presumably reflecting the fact that a lot of what I was blogging about was in fact blogging, I added the sub-title

Des Walsh blogs on practical business blogging, networking and home based business

It appears that for a while I gave up on having a sub-title. Then some time in 2008, a  new sub-title appeared: “Working from home in a networked world”. That lasted till at least April 2009.

The Wayback Machine does not provide any snapshots since 2009, but I recall that at some time more recently the sub-title became something like “For professionals working from home and those who would like to”.

There is currently no sub-title, more because of a change in design than deliberate decision. The statement now which leads the About page is:

The Thinking Home Business blog shares ideas, experience and tips for men and women professionals already working from home and those who are interested in the possibility of doing so.

The rest of the About page is still about me as well as about the blog’s purpose, still promoting my services as well as explaining the site’s purpose, but I believe in a more relaxed and readable way than the somewhat eye-watering resume-style version I had back in January 2005.

So basically the site’s purpose is now being described pretty much as it was at the beginning, without specific reference to the highways and by-ways of blogging or networking.

Where to now?

Given the increasing number of people who, from choice or circumstance, are now working from home, I see a continuing need for sites like this, where those of us who have some experience in this field can share that experience to hopefully be of help to others. Sharing also what we know, in our non-technical way, about how to make technology work for us and not the other way around, will continue to be part of what people will find here.

And of course, given my daily professional interest in social media and social networking, they will still be very much part of the mix.

There will be more bloggers posting here. One will continue to be my partner Suzie Cheel, when she can spare some time from her own blogs such as her Suzie Cheel dot Com. We need to update the About page to reflect that.

We are also considering inviting some other bloggers to guest post here, people we know will provide interesting, helpful content for us folks who have businesses and professional practices from home and those who are considering it.