Pingback

Pingback is one of the things that I have been working on. I tried to implement most of the PingBack 1.0 specification, but I have left somethings out. I haven't quite implemented the faults as it is described there it should be, but my work won't stop here. I have just brought it to a functional state.

So now if someone will ever write in a pingback-enabled blog a post regarding and linking back to one of my posts, then a pingback comment will be posted on my linked post along with an excerpt from the post that linked to me.

Next on my "TO DO" list is to implement TrackBack. I don't why TrackBack has caught on so much. I see almost every blog supporting TrackBack. Very few blogs use pingback. Anyway, in the near future I will implement it.

Comment spam

When I was implementing the comments part of my weblog, I also focused on blocking spam comments. My method of blocking comment spam was inspired from the basic idea of the MT-Blacklist plugin for MovableType. I keep a blacklist of domains and URLs that might appear in spam comments, which I update regularly via the RSS update feed available at Comment Spam Clearinghouse.

Also another measure I have decided to apply was to temporarily block an ip for a few minutes after publishing a comment.

Of course all these measures have been taken to prevent the spam comments to get published, but I will first have to have some real comments from people before I will be targeted by spam comments marketers. :)

The rel="nofollow" attribute

Today is the one month mark since Google announced the introduction of the rel="nofollow" attribute and it's wanted effect on the weblogs. There has been a lot of talk on this subject since then. Some have supported this move, some have not. Aaron published a nice roundup of the response of this event.

Personally I have decided to implement this attribute exactly where it was supposed to be implemented, the comments. Every link posted in a comment and also the link of the comment's author will be nofollowed.

I believe that the comments of the weblogs are there for the readers to discover the people behind the comments, and not for the search engines to discover them. I am sure that the not-supporting part of the blogosphere won't agree with me, but this is my take on the subject and I think every individual should decide whether or not to implement it or not.

What I don't agree with is using this attribute to boost your search engine ranking. I see some sites that have several outbound links, but a part of them are nofollowed. This shouldn't be done. You can detect nofollow links on a page in Firefox by adding a custom stylesheet, details over at Google Blogoscoped.

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