Originally it appeared in internet guestbooks, where spammers would repeatedly fill a guestbook with links to their own site and no relevant comment. If an actual comment was given it was often just “cool page”, “nice website”, or keywords of the spammed link.

(That’s just one of the reasons why you should never leave comments saying “cool” or “great” or similar meaningless words).

Here’s a snippet from Squidbits – Greekgeek’s Squidoo Blog in which she explains

Linkspam is not harmless. If your webpage links to poor neighborhoods, to sites that engage in shady linking practices, or to a lot of non-relevant content, those links could lower the quality, trustworthiness and relevance of your article in Google’s eyes.

(If you use Squidoo, Greekgeek’s blog is well worth following)

But let me reinforce the message about link spam – we all have to actively fight the people who will bring down your site without a second thought. Does it give them pleasure to destroy your site? Do they act from malice? Or is it just a manifestation of self-centred stupidity? It doesn’t really matter – the result of their spam is the same.

Linkspam is more than a nuisance, it can kill your site.
Link spammers will attack you. Link spammers will attack ANYTHING out there, and nothing is foolproof. For success with a social site, or any site that allows user-generated content (such as a blog allowing comments), you have to be prepared to fight spam.

Even in these days of capcha programs, even if you scrupulously moderate every comment you receive, the disgusting people who revel in creating linkspam continue to do it and they’re always finding new ways to do it. There’s software for sale which linkspams for them!

Please don’t get tired of fighting linkspam, keep at it!

Report the offenders!
Matt Cutts (the head of Google’s Webspam team) wants your linkspam reports

There was a very specific meaning to the phrase “computer virus” – it was software that did very, very bad things to your computer and you generally knew all about it straight away. Fixes were painful and expensive, but you knew you had a problem and, if you’d been stung before, you were far more likely to have backups of your most precious files.

Today’s malware most definitely doesn’t want you to know that it’s there. It’s not about malicious programmers causing havoc for the fun of it, it’s about money and identity.

For some time Mac users were largely immune from this kind of thing, but the recent outbreak of the Flashback Trojan proves that Mac security wasn’t solely a function of its Unix underpinnings or any other kind of inbuilt security measure. It was more to do with the size of the market which malware writers could target.

Mac users were just far too few!

Flashback is a nasty little trojan that tries to get your Mac connected up to a network of other machines for illicit purposes. The current outbreak relates to weaknesses in the default version of Java shipped with the current version of the Mac operating system.

Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

So what’s the sensible end-user approach?

For a start, an anti-malware package — no matter your choice of computer — is an absolute must.

And it does still pay to be wary about what you’re installing.

Running software updates which you trust from your operating system provider — whether that’s Apple or Microsoft or any of the countless Linux variants out there — should also be a must-do kind of activity.

As for the Flashback outbreak, Apple released an update to its Java package that blocks further infections but, if you’re not updated, you’re simply not protected.

Likewise, any anti-virus package is only as good as its updates.

Don’t forget to back up your files frequently

More on Flashback

What you need to know about the Flashback trojan
Where did Flashback start? Blame the blogosphere

Some blogs use a static page as the opening to their site, a welcome page to express the overall contents and direction. A summary of what’s inside. The feel of the place.

Others will use blog posts to express this feel.

So what do you use as a welcome page? It can depend on the frequency of posts, or if you need to convey essential information on the page that may be the first that a visitor sees.

For examples, here are two very different sites using the same theme, one using a static page and one using blog posts. The blog page is a very simple layout.

Australian Landcare International – static page to tell you about the organisation

Susanna Duffy dot com – blog post page

How do I change from Static to Blog page or vice versa?

Go to your Dashboard
- Settings
- – Reading

It looks like this

Click the Checkbox to switch around from one to the other

There are lots of themes which will display a magazine style arrangement of blog posts, latest and/or handpicked, or a combination of pages and posts. You can’t use a static page with these themes.

Criminals can get the information they need to assume your identity from a variety of sources such as stealing your wallet, rifling through your garbage cans or by compromising your credit or bank information. They may approach you in person, by telephone, or on the Internet and ask you for the information.

The sources of information about you are so numerous that you can’t thoroughly prevent the theft of your identity. But you CAN minimise your risk of loss by following a few simple hints.

Tips for Avoiding Identity Theft:

• 1. Destroy! Destroy!
  Never throw away ATM receipts, credit statements, credit cards, or bank statements in a usable form. Trash them. Don’t just screw them up and chuck into a bin, rip them up, tear them up or, better still, buy yourself a cheap home shredder. My little shredder cost $10.I also destroy all envelopes which have my name and address on them. This is going over the top as my address is pretty easy to find but I shred anyway.
• 2. Never give your credit card number over the telephone unless you make the call. Even then, why are you giving out your details over the phone?
• 3. Reconcile your bank account monthly, and notify your bank of discrepancies immediately. Report unauthorised financial transactions to your bank, credit card company and the police as soon as you detect them.
• 4. Keep a list of telephone numbers to call to report the loss or theft of your wallet, credit cards, etc. Make a photocopy of all your ID , your many cards, driver’s license etc – then if your bag is stolen you can contact the bank, health insurance agency etc and give them the numbers on your documents.

Your Credit Report
Review a copy of your credit report at least once each year. Notify the credit bureau in writing of any questionable entries and follow through until they are explained or removed.

If your identity has been assumed, ask the credit bureau to print a statement to that effect in your credit report.

You can sign up for a free account, and be blogging before you know it. You won’t even need to invest in a domain name, just have a blog of your own at a domain like yourname.wordpress.com.

However, going from a yourname.wordpress.com domain to yourname.com in the future is going to hurt your search engine rankings. This is something that you might want to consider before going the totally free route.

Advertising Policy
WordPress. com is hosted by Automattic, they are the only ones that can place ads on your site. If you really dislike the ads, you can pay $30 per year to have them removed.

WordPress.com’s advertising policy is pretty clear, they aren’t interested in you making money from your site.

The barrier to entry is extremely low here so it can be very appealing to the less technically inclined. For hobbyists or people interested in just kicking the tires, WordPress. com is a good starting point.

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is the version of WordPress that you have to host yourself. This means that if you use wordpress.org, you have to go out and find a web hosting company to host your site.

The good thing is that some hosting companies (like Smooth Stuff) may give you a short grace period to try out their service before you get your first bill.

You’ll also have to buy your own domain to use with your blog—you won’t even have the option not to.

It’s not too complicated to get WordPress installed. In the event that you do have any problems, most good shared hosts will help you out.

Once this has been completed, you can do whatever you wish with your shiny new WordPress installation. This also means that you get access to two of the best features of WordPress- – plugins and custom themes.

Themes are what control the look and feel of your blog, colours, layouts, fonts, etc. Yes, it’s true that you are able to pick a theme while using WordPress.com but there is a limited selection and you are not able to do much customisation to the theme itself. If you know your way around CSS, you can pay an additional $30 per year to have the ability to modify the CSS.

Plugins

The killer feature of WordPress.org has got to be the ability to add plugins, which are not available with WordPress.com.

Plugins are add-ons that expand the core functionality of WordPress.

Probably the most important feature of using WordPress.org is you get to make money with your blog. You’re free to use anything from Adsense to affiliate promotions. You’ll even have the option of creating and selling your own products through your site. And if the need arises, you can turn a WordPress.org site into a full-blown ecommerce solution.

There aren’t many safety nets with a self-hosted site, so make sure you back it up often. A good web host usually performs regular backups, but most will tell you that they don’t guarantee anything. So whatever you do, make sure that you perform your own WordPress backups frequently.

Wrapping it up

I have to admit that after being so accustomed to the flexibility of WordPress.org, I would have a hard time being happy with a WordPress.com blog. If you have any aspirations of taking your blog past the hobby stage, you should just start out with a self-hosted site.

It is possible to move a WordPress.com hosted site to a self-hosted site later on. However, presuming that you might consider starting with a WordPress.com site and moving to a self-hosted site later on, you’re best to just start out with a self-hosted site.

WordPress.com is great if you are looking to keep an online journal.

The initially-free option of WordPress.com could actually result in higher costs down the road. After you start piling on extra fees for a custom domain, ad removal, extra storage space (you only get 3GBs to start), plus the ability to use custom CSS in your blog design, you really aren’t saving much, if any, money on WordPress.com, and you have to deal with its limitations.

Finally, and this is a big “finally”, you don’t own a WordPress.com website. After you’ve spent all that time to build a blog and an audience, do you really want to wake up one morning and find out that WordPress.com didn’t like your site so they deleted it? There isn’t a strong chance of this happening, but you should be aware that it could.

Now here’s a great addition to any lensmaster’s toolkit.

Say G’day to squidtools.com

It’s a handy tool for everybody but it’s going to be especially useful to those of us with a large number of lenses.

SquidTools is a set of free tools, utilities, and resources operating independently of Squidoo using publicly available data and and APIs.

Have a look at the Advanced Dashboard
With multiple sorting methods and a filter function to let you search in the list it’s going to make things a lot easier.

and here I can see the last updated lenses

Each entry contains links for viewing, editing, stats, and a more link that pops up a window with additional info and services.

Let’s check some backlinks on a lens

Wait, there’s more!

I’ve saved the best till last

Make your own Featured Lens Module

Have a look at Recipes by Montalbano – a text module with code generated by squidtools

I’m thrilled with this!

And it’s all courtesy of A3 Labs

Go and say thanks!

Hover your mouse over and you’ll see ‘Add Media‘

Have a look at the image below.

Once you click that, you’ll see the instructions that WordPress displays so clearly for you. Just like uploading an image.

Choose the PDF file
 

 

Insert into post.

A-shoreline-litter-survey

and there it is!

Make a folder in your documents. Call it whatever you wish but it’s probably easier all round to call it ‘blog content’ or something that you’ll recognise again.

Go to Dashboard – Tools

Choose Export- and this page will open up

Download to the folder you made

That’s all.

The longest video is one minute and one second, enough time for someone to look at without going to sleep.

If anything goes wrong, it’s easier to handle an exported xml file than to be fiddling around with databases. It’s also extermely handy, wonderful in fact, if you’re moving from one domain to another

Know how to export your WP content?

1. Go to your Dashboard

2. Scroll down to Tools

3. Click on the Export link

4. Follow the instructions

Remember where you saved it!

If you haven’t done this before and you’re moving content to another site, it’s probably easier for you to save the file to your desktop so that you can find it again with no trouble.

I have a few little folders in my documents called ‘smooth-stuff-export’ etc. The xml files are dated so you can always take your last xml file for importing elsewhere. (Every now and then I remember to delete earlier export files).

Importing your WP Content

To import to another wordpress, simply go to your new home and use the IMPORT button