If your WordPress (WP) site is going to support comments, then Akismet is a requirement. Letting comments appear on your site without any moderation is an open invitation to porn site and other SPAM comments. WordPress supports comment moderation ranging from the requirement of having an administrator approve every comment before it is displayed, to all comments appearing as soon as they are entered.

Moderating every comment is a lot of work. If you expect few comments on your site, approving every one is the safest approach. If you want a lot of comments, then remove all approvals and turn on Akismet. Akismet is a plugin that scans each comment as it comes in and moves ones it suspects as SPAM into a SPAM area that requires approval. All others appear immediately.

There are two possible problems areas of this approach: missing a SPAM comment or suspecting a valid comment is SPAM. My experience with Akismet has been positive. I find it occasionally puts a valid comment in the SPAM bucket, but seldom misses SPAM.

Best of all is the installation. Nothing could be easier, as Akismet is included with WordPress. All you do is go to Plugins and activate Akismet. For Akismet to work, you will need an API key. Go to http://wordpress.com/signup/ and sign up for a WordPress.com account. Your API key will be emailed to you as part of the confirmation message. If you already have a WordPress.com account, your API key is listed on your profile page, which you can get to by clicking the “My Account” link in the top right when you’re logged in.

Once Akismet is activated, you will see three types of comments in the Comments administration area: Pending, Approved and Spam. If you have multiple WordPress sites, you need only one API key for all of them.

By using Akismet, comments appear automatically on my sites, but SPAM comments await moderation.

Happy commenting!

I have about 20 WordPress (WP) plugins that I use on my sites. A plugin provides additional capabilities to a WP site. Some are specialized, such as the calendar for showing future events, but many are appropriate for any site. I will start with the ones I consider the essentials. Here is my most essential plugin.

WordPress Database Backup
If the website has value, it should be backed up. Your hosting site can be lost by a system crash, disk failure or your hosting vendor going out of business. Nothing is more sickening than losing months or years of work on a website. To protect from this, I download my content on a regular basis as well as schedule an email database backup daily or weekly.

There are only three parts of a WP site that make that installation unique. All other WP files can be downloaded from wordpress.org.

• wp-config.php – This file in the root of the installation sets the configuration for the site. It points to the database as well as setting the prefix, language and security features.
• wp-content – This folder has all of the site-unique content: themes, plugins and uploaded files.
• The database. Assuming you are using the default prefix “wp_” then the table names beginning with wp_ are WordPress tables. These have the posts as well as all content and user information.

The first two (wp-config.php and wp-content) can be downloaded via an FTP utility such as FileZilla to your local computer. The database cannot be downloaded with FTP. It must be exported. “WordPress Database Backup” by Austin Matzko is one way to backup the database. Download the plugin and FTP the wp-db-backup folder into wp-content/plugins. In WP version 2.7, you can upload and install a plugin from the Plugins/Add New panel. If you are using the WP 2.7 Add New Plugin, you send up the original zip file.

Now go to Plugins and activate “WordPress Database Backup”.  To configure the plugin, go to Tools/Backup. The screen is divided into a top, middle and bottom. The top/middle is used to do an immediate backup.  If you have not installed any plugins that create new tables, all you need to do is go to the middle area and click on the “Backup now!” button. If you have other plugin tables, select them from the top area.

The most powerful feature of the plugin is the Scheduled Backup in the bottom section. Select a schedule interval. I use Once Daily for popular sites and Once Weekly for more static sites. Enter the best email address and click on the “Schedule backup” button. Now you will be emailed a zip file backup of your database.

How to restore the system in the event of a host failure is another discussion and is usually left to an IT person. Restoring a lost system is complicated, and it cannot be done without the backups. Hopefully you will never lose a site, but if you do, a simple backup can save it from being lost in cyberspace forever.

wp-db-backup is available from: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/

FileZilla FTP is available from: http://filezilla-project.org/

It is hard for me to find other WordPress developers to discuss technology and directions. To facilitate such interactions among experts the WordPress community created WordCamps. Imagine my delight to see a WordCamp in Toronto May 8-10, 2009. Three days to rub shoulders with other WordPress techies.

WordPress started as a blogging engine but grew into areas never imagined by the original creators. With a vast worldwide community of developers and users WordPress sites now cover content management, online courses and even games. The business community has been quick to embrace WordPress for quick flexible websites. In a few hours a professional looking site can be created that looks like it took days of work.

My own work has focused on using WordPress for an online campus and courses. The courses can not only be taken from a personal computer and from an iPhone/iTouch including viewing video and taking quizzes and exams.

I enrolled for the Toronto WordCamp this morning. I am looking forward to seeing what others are doing with WordPress.

What is WordCamp anyway?

WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.

central.wordcamp.org

Details: phug.ca/wordcamptoronto
Dates: May 8-10, 2009
Cost: $50 ($35 student)
Location: The OASI
99 Sudbury Street, Toronto. www.theoasi.com

When I was a child I had an Erector Set. I spent hours manipulating wheels, girders, nuts and bolts to create buildings, cranes and the like. From the time he was a toddler, my son, Mike, had LEGO® to satisfy his need to build intricate things. This toy offered similar play value, except with plastic components. As he got older, his interest matured – and so did the LEGO we bought him. Selecting a new set had little to do with what it built and more to do with what parts he gained. When I bought Mike the LEGO 8858 Engines Expert Builder Set, it was the parts to form the connecting rods and the crankshaft that were the attraction. He was acquiring new tools for his craft of creating with LEGO bricks.

Today, my Erector Set is WordPress and the iPhone. I have been writing a campus system for offering courses online. The site started as a simple WordPress installation with a post for each lesson in the course. Once my canvas was prepared and I was ready to create my art, I found plugins, modified some and used them to construct the campus.

I love to collect plugins that add to my kit bag of capabilities. To find out what plugins were available, I spent a weekend browsing the 3,700 entries on the WordPress site. I cataloged the ones that were of interest. Last week at a meeting, I heard about an advanced search engine called Lucene. A check of my list revealed WPSearch, a plugin for the Lucene search. My erector set grew.

My latest fascination is with the Apple iPhone and iTouch. I wrote a plugin/theme so that a WordPress site can be viewed nicely on the iPhone. My interest now is in writing an iPhone application that can exploit a WordPress installation.

I am still looking for the web challenge that will use all the tools and allow me to merge my WordPress and my iPhone expertise – another tool for my electronic Erector Set.

I was looking for some sites to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Here are a few I found.

• An excellent cheat sheet – http://www.gosquared.com/images/help_sheets/CSS%20Help%20Sheet.pdf
• W3 Schools’ free Learn CSS tutorial online – http://www.w3schools.com/css/