Yes, and finally it’s version 1.0. It’s a small update, but one which can improve the sidebar layout if you have been affected by it. The latest version fixes the extra tag that appears on all other pages when Show In Home Only is selected. Thanks to Ulquiorra for reporting the bug.
Download Top Commentators widget v.1.0 now.
I cringed when I read Eric Giguere’s recent post on how to build high PR back links to your site, one of the steps being that you find a DoFollow site and commenting on them. It reminded me of the keyword spamming I faced on this blog’s comments a while ago, and it irked me to no end. I tried to moderate the comments as much as I can, but at the end, I surrendered and removed DoFollow from my site.
The flip side of the coin is that having DoFollow on your comments does increase comments, and thus, traffic, to your site; new blogs can definitely benefit from removing NoFollow from their comments if they are just starting off and building a community around their sites. Having a Top Commentators list can achieve a similar effect, especially now with the hijacking issue fixed. Both the DoFollow and the Top Commentators options cannot address the issue of getting quality comments; I still have to moderate, and in small instances unfortunately, delete one-liners such as “I like your site,” “I agree,” or “it is beautiful.”
When I think about it now, I still feel that it’s a shame that I had to disable DoFollow on my site, because I really didn’t mind passing out juice to other sites that needed the PR. However, I spent too much time moderating comments, and decided my time was better spent posting on my blogs instead of filtering comments.
Some of you who have visited my site since a couple of weeks ago may have noticed the Tip Me (Scratchback) widget that I added in the sidebars. Yes, you don’t see it anymore, I’ve removed it. 
I suppose there’s no point, really, in using that widget if you want to get backlinks from my site. since all you have to do is comment on my post and your link automatically appears in my Top Commentators list. The only difference between the Tip Me and Top Commentators in terms of link visibility is the fact that Tip Me appears site-wide, whereas the Top Commentators links appear only on the home page of WebGrrrl.net.
I installed the ScratchBack widget to see whether I can really make money out of it. I probably should have promoted it a bit by posting about it; on the other hand, since I was only experimenting with it, it wasn’t a big deal anyway. I started off with a $5 tip per link, then lowered it to $2 a link, and still no buyer. Looks like Scratchback isn’t as effective as Text Link Ads or Linkworth if you’re meaning to use it as a way to sell links in your site. At least with the latter two, they do the work of looking for advertisers on your behalf, while with Scratchback, you may have to work extra hard to convince people to buy your links.
For such an avid WP user, I even surprised myself in waiting this long to upgrade WebGrrrl.net to WP2.5, which I haven’t. I’m currently running the latest version (2.5.1) in my sandbox to see what the big deal is about, and apart from the need to make my WordPress install more secure due to the latest patches, I see very little point of rushing to upgrade.
Two things irks me with WordPress 2.5. The Gallery section is so confusing — it makes uploading photos much more complicated than it’s suppose to be. Am I the only one who’s particularly loathing the thumbnailing and aligning options? I dunno. I suppose it’s just me either being fussy due to my pregnancy hormones, or I just don’t like those unnecessary little changes. One part of the Gallery I haven’t tried to use is uploading video, which I hope to be less of a hassle than pre-WP 2.5. Secondly, what is up with the Category section?! Why has it been moved from the right sidebar to the bottom of the post form? I find it very inconvenient to say the least.
I also noticed that WebGrrrl.net is heavily reliant on plugins, some of which I haven’t tested out in 2.5, and most of which I find my blog can’t do without. That, and I need to make sure that my modified Kubrik theme doesn’t break after using the latest version, so I have my hands full with just the testing phase and add delay to the whole upgrade.
I better just get some sleep first.
Top Commentators Widget users rejoice! Thanks to my heartburn and insomnia, I finally managed to fix and test the TCW and made some improvements as promised earlier. The updates are as listed in the readme file:
Get the updated version from the WordPress Plugins Directory, or click on the Update Automatically option if you’re already using WP 2.5. I’m glad it’s done and over with for now. I’m waiting on those bug reports to make TCW a stable 1.0 which I plan on doing so within the next three months.
I apologize for taking so long to update this; can you believe that my greatest challenge was actually figuring out how to update the widget in the Plugins Directory using Subversion, adding to a couple of weeks’ delay at least on the update? It kept getting stuck under the Development Version which I didn’t quite understand. I almost surrendered on it around 10 minutes ago when suddenly — a little Update here, a little Clean Up there — and the dang thing finally updated in the repository! That really helped cure my insomnia, ’cause I’m feeling pretty sleepy right now.
Till next time.
