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Tag: Open Source

Ducks tend to use DoFollow

Ducks tend to use DoFollow


 
Continuing the title of this post, I don’t think this is really a question (maybe a rhetorical one). To me, the answer is clear: DoFollow. I just picked the title because I thought it’s amusing 😉

 
Yesterday I got a call from my good friend Miki Rapoport. He said “Dude, why are you using NoFollow links in your comments? How do you expect anyone to comment?” and I said “ehhm.. but I’m not!”. And then I remembered, WordPress’ default setting is NoFollow. This was purposely set up to discourage spammers (who won’t gain link benefits though they will get potential traffic). I’ve learned this a long, long time ago but well, haven’t really thought about it since then.

 
This was pretty annoying to find out and I’m glad Miki mentioned it to me. I’ve created dozens of websites, but this has always slipped my mind. And even though I often check the follow status of other websites, that’s not something I’ve ever done for my own sites!

 
Irritatingly, WordPress doesn’t offer a way to turn it off. However, multiple plugins exist for this very purpose. I repeatedly kept trying 3 Plugins (they all failed) until I found out that the theme I use hard-codes the nofollow links. Once I realized that’s the case it was a trivial thing to correct.

 
That being said, I tried one of the other plugins, the one that was my favorite, in another of my sites, and it worked like a charm.

 
The one I recommend is NoFollow Free, in particular because it is very configurable: you can set it so a number of comments a person makes are nofollow and after a threshold is reached it becomes dofollow. You can also set it so that certain words immediately trigger a nofollow. Pretty useful.

 
I also tested the other two, and they probably work as well (I don’t know because of my theme).

 
Highly recommended for people who want to give some ‘link juice’ to people who leave comments on their websites. The only concern is spammers, but that’s a different story (Akismet, how do I love thee? let me count the ways)

 
Now that my blog is setup for DoFollow, go ahead, leave a comment. I dare ya! 😉

Industry Review

I’ve been using StatCounter for site statistics tracking for several years now. It’s free, it’s simple – it’s great! I know some people must be rolling their eyes (I know because I also saw this in person), why not use Google Analytics, these people are asking? Well, for starters, I used it, and didn’t like it. It just.. wasn’t convenient for me. I like Statcounter. Secondly, it sends tons of information to Google that I don’t need it to have (I think it’s this article that discusses it).

 
But that’s not my point.

 
Today I noticed someone is accessing my website – this website – through a statcounter menu that is not mine.

 
Unless I’m mistaken, this can only mean someone has some statcounter code hidden somewhere in this WP installation. I searched quite thoroughly and couldn’t find anything. I looked for encoded sections, usually the likely culprits, but couldn’t find any (in general I try and stay away from themes that have encoded sections for this very reason).

 
That being said, the fact is, someone gets my statistics without my knowledge (or consent). And since I’m using an open source piece of software, it’s obviously related to that. Clearly similar issues are the disadvantages (with the advantages being that it’s open, free, upgradeable, flexible, and much more).

 
I find this very disturbing. If they can view my stats, who knows what else they can do? Is this specific to my theme? or all of WP? (that might be too paranoid, but you never know). I’ll probably end up changing my theme (which is a pity since I really like it). So my word of advice: keep this in mind when using WP!

 
One last thing: if the mysterious person who gets my stats reads this, please contact me: udi@IndustryReview.org. I won’t be mad (I promise). I just want to know how you did this. When I was a teenager I used to dabble in similar things but that is long gone. Call it professional curiosity. (I’ve also done such things in a significantly smaller scale – when I was a teenager, there was no WWW! This might be a good time to mention I’ve been using the internet since 1988).