Every day, our ScotBlogs users publish over 100 posts, yet many do not use the spell checker. It may be that at this wonderful institution, our users are all wonderful spellers. Or it may be that they just forget to use it.
We have just installed After the Deadline, an intuitive spelling and grammar checker, to all of our blogs. An API key is required for its use, and you may enter the College’s key to use the software: 9546992ac1e662c817b695ff126ff400
And, you can view a comprehensive demo in the video below (originally created for WordPress.com):
We have gotten many requests for a spam-blocking system on ScotBlogs and would like our users to get familiar with Akismet, a spam-blocking plugin that is now activated site-wide on all of the blogs on the server. I’ll begin with a few snippets from Akismet’s own FAQ site:
How does it work?
When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Do I have to maintain a blacklist?
Nope! Part of the idea of Akismet is that you’re always protected up-to-the-second from the latest dirty tricks of spammers. There’s no maintenance, no upgrading, no hassle.
Where does the spam go?
When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case you want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it. In the unlikely event something gets incorrectly identified as spam you can correct it and it submits the “false positive” back to Akismet for analysis and improvement of our system. If a spam comment happens to get through and you mark it as spam within WordPress, it does the same thing. Akismet becomes more effective the more you use it.
Help! Akismet is catching a regular comment as spam!
Don’t worry, if you see a regular comment on your Akismet page, just click the “Approve” button or the “Not Spam” checkbox and submit and the comment will be sent back to Akismet as a mistake. The system will learn from your submission, though it may take a day or so in some cases. False positives, as they’re called, are extremely rare and we watch them closely.
How do I get rid of the “Missing API Key” message on my ScotBlog Dashboard?
You can enter the Wooster.edu API key by navigating to Plugins -> Akismet Configuration from your Dashboard, and entering the following key into the appropriate field: 42ce38ac029f .
The screencast below gives an overview of Gravatar, which provides a quick and easy way to get a globally recognized avatar that will work with ScotBlogs and beyond.
Our blogging server is up and running with a new version of WordpressMU and new features for our Official Blogs! Get ready for a complete listing of blogs available through our new blogging site.
