The all wrong story about comments

It’s been a seriously long time since i wrote here. But i can’t remember the last time i felt this urge, this itch to write about something. All this time that i haven’t updated my blog and i seldom comment on blogs i haven’t been all away. I’ve been reading the usual blogs i always read. Then why didn’t i comment? Because i had nothing to say!

One would ask, why do i say this? Well, i am sick of reading blog posts saying “how commenting can improve your traffic”, or “comment on do-follow blogs” and the such. You won’t believe how much annoyed i am when i read those kind of posts. Just today i read this post where someone was explaining what makes him comment or stops him from commenting on a blog. None of the reasons he mentioned was about the content and the article he was actually reading! This tipped me of. I wanted to write this a long time ago but this just made the cut.

What he basically said was that if it doesn’t have commentluv, it is a do-follow blog or it has a CAPTCHA, it doesn’t make him want to comment. And here is what i say. Commentluv, in my humble opinion, is one of the worst plugins out there. Why? Because an article on your blog has links to other articles on other blogs that are irrelevant with that content you are writing about! They call this link love. It’s all bullshit! Why? Because it would be link love if you posted in your article “blah blah blah here is an excellent example of what i am talking about [link] blah blah blah”. That is link love. On the other hand this:

SomeStupidPrick wrote:

Man this is a great article!

SomeStupidPrick’s latest blog post “How to have an irrelevant link on someone else’s blog”

This is not link love. It’s disguised spam comment.

Now, i don’t want to be unfair. I know a lot of my readers who have blogs, are commentluv enabled and i still like their blogs. But, i believe, they have been tricked into some stupid marketing useless idea. And let me put it this way. If you will comment only if i am commentluv enabled then guess what. Get the heck out! (besides i don’t have commentluv and i appreciate people leaving comments just for the pure purpose of it).

On the do-follow part. Things are pretty much the same as above. The purpose search engines rank your content in a certain way is to make it easier to be discoverable on relevant search queries. If you go ahead on a spree and start planting your link everywhere you will definitely get results but they won’t be quality results. Think as a user for crying out loud! How many times have you been searching for something and you stumble on completely irrelevant posts just because of these kind of stuff? So, once more, if you comment here after checking if this is a do-follow blog, get the heck out!

Finally, once and for all, let’s tackle the CAPTCHA thing. I want to make things easier to my readers to drop a line. On the other hand i want to make things easier for me to moderate. I hate all this wise-ass people/bots trying to plant their links on my blog. So, if this is what i have to do then i’ll do it. Besides, you fill up so many CAPTCHA’s a day for useless things and registration forms, and you are too lazy to fill an easy one here ti have your say? Get the heck out!

And what do i mean by “The all wrong story about comments”? Well, comments where named comments and not “advertise here”, because they are intended to serve as a way to give feedback or thank someone. They where not intended to boost or promote your own stuff.

I know that after a long time, writing with such hatred is not such a good idea. On the other hand, i think it perfectly explains my absence. The blogosphere has been contaminated with people trying to make money writing crappy blogs. I fear that that will drive quality blogging to a halt.

I have been disappointed on the majority of the content posted these days. So little things are informative or worth a read. Most of the stuff are junk. And don’t get me wrong here loyal readers. I love your blogs. I have been following you and “you” know who you are.

The VPS neighborhood

The past couple of days i’ve been bugged with an idea. I saw a new hosting company come around called “EcVPS”. They offer VPS plans for very low, and extremely affordable prices. I know that there has always been a gap between shared hosting, which is as low as $3/month, to the next step for a blog / site, the VPS hosting starting at $10-15/month. I know that many people decide to go on with it, and in my opinion they make a very good decision. But there are always people that are not comfortable administering their own boxes. Then they have two options, stick with shared or pay extra for managed hosting. Fortunately, nowadays, hosting is not expensive, even managed. But, still, jumping from $40 a year to, more or less, $120, is something that boggles.

(more…)

Efficient or non-efficient?

All of you out there that know me, know that i am an efficiency freak. Most of the times, when someone flashes a plugin to me, i stop and say “is that really necessary?” instead of “this looks cool!”. I know, it’s mostly annoying but you got to admit, i have a point. But, first things first. I will concentrate on WordPress, since, most of my readers are bloggers using the platform and many don’t really get why i nag all the time about performance and plugins. To give you a good taste of the complexity here is a small diagram.

This actually is a rough representation of what’s going on when a client request on your blog is in progress. Let’s take it one step at a time:

1. A client makes a request on your blog. This starts on the Apache level.
2. Apache realizes that it’s a php script that has to be executed (index.php).
3. Gives the PHP module the script as a parameter and kicks it off.
4. Then, it’s WordPress’s time. It starts loading the core.
5. On various steps of the process of rendering the requested page the plugins are loaded.
6. Just like a special plugin, the theme of the site is loaded as well. WordPress decides if it needs to load single.php for instance (when rendering a single post) or index.php (when rendering the homepage) etc.
7. Each time a plugin or a theme wants to make a query it uses the wpdb global variable. This actually channels the query through WordPress, which channels it to the PHP module, which channels it to the PHP MySQL module, which channels it to MySQL server, which runs the query and creates the result set, which is finally channeled back all the way to the plugin.

Do you see how painful it is to make a query? Now take that and multiply it by 50-60 which is the average query count on a WordPress blog (not the default installation but an established one). You can see now how your memory and CPU get clogged up when a few requests come along together.

(more…)

The acrobatic balance of price and quality on freelancers

Most of you know that for quite some time now I’ve raised the “for hire” flag. As a freelancer I haven’t had much luck, except for a few jobs I’ve taken and for which i have to tell Kim a great thanks. She always puts a good word out for me and i am very, very grateful for this. I don’t want to sound wrong, I think that the problem is I haven’t pursued it as much, in terms of hooking my self up with social networks and the blogosphere in general. I am not complaining. I think though, that there is one more aspect on my failure.

A few years back, a very big source for a freelancer’s income were sites like Scriptlance, where people would just post projects they wanted done, then coders and designers would bid for that. The trend that I have noticed happening the last couple of years, on all of those sites, is mediocre coders bidding extremely low on projects. For instance, they would bid on a two day job as low as $20-$50. That price is not competable by any serious freelancer.

(more…)

Should you be concerned about your WordPress security?

Since my early days, i’ve always been the one to second guess what the majority of people think. I’ve always been the “pain”, you know where. When i hear most of the people saying “this is bad”, or “this is not right”, there always is a denial feeling jumping out. Over the past few days i’ve stumbled across many articles about how WordPress is not that secure and, many have suggested that it’s even easy to hack a WordPress. I have had some serious thoughts about this and today, through a blog post from Sire, i stumbled across an article titled “How to Stop Your WordPress Blog Getting Hacked“. It lays out the subject very seriously, but as always, i have serious objections. I will take the points one by one.

(more…)