We bloggers love comments, but most bloggers realize that the people who read their blog are also reading many others as well, and that leaving comments for every post isn’t always possible.
So I’m trying out a new feature just to see how it goes. 

I am feeling…Excited (0) Interested (3) Surprised (1) Angry (0) Sad (0) Bored (0) Amused (0)

Different pages load at different speeds.  Most of that is controllable, but some of it isn’t.  The parts that are controllable are those that I want to focus on, and some recent slowness on the site, which seems to have been caused by some plugins suddenly gone badly awry, has been resolved.
Or so I thought.
I’ve received these comments from an …

I think I may have found at least part of the problem with the slowness of this website over the past few weeks. I had to do something drastic: I had to rename my plugins folder then start a new folder called “plugins,” and I’m gradually moving each formerly-active plugin, one by one, to the new plugins folder.
I have …

If you’ve been trying to access my site over the past few days, I’m very sorry about the problems many of you have been having.  You’ve likely had to wait a long time for the site to load, or you’ve gotten 404 or 500 errors.  We’re working on it, and hope to have it fixed today.  Again, sorry for the …

One spambot in particular attempted several visits to the blog the other day, but my multi-level spam-fighting system blocked all of it. When I went into the spam filter just to see what was there, I found this dubious collection.
The remarks are no doubt designed to blend into whatever conversation is going on, then slip a link to a …

The end of another year means that it’s time to take a quick look back at some of the better posts here at Patrick’s Place.
As in the past, I make my selections based on what I said and how I said it, not comment counts or the number of times the post was viewed. The sad fact of blogging …

Since switching to the current design for this blog, I’ve had to make one notable adjustment in the way I post new articles:  I’ve had to add thumbnails.
If you’re reading this from the blog’s front page, you’ll see the thumbnail images next to almost all of the posts.  If you’re reading this from the post’s actual single page, then you’ll …

I figured I’d share one of those occasional keyword search lists to give you an idea of what a lot of people were looking for when they managed to land here at Patrick’s Place.
I couldn’t understand why the post I did about South Carolina’s paltry state Christmas tree was listed at the bottom of the page as having received so …

Remember that little addition I mentioned not long ago, the one that allows you to leave comments here without having to decipher warped, twisted “Captcha” text?
When leaving a comment, all you have to do is just check a box to indicate that you’re a human, then voila: you’re done!
As a general rule, when I go to the admin panel for …

For a brief moment yesterday, I actually felt like a webmaster. Like I said: it was brief.
If you read my earlier post about the best man who decided to play a very dirty trick on his friends the newlyweds, you may have noticed that I reposted one of the guy’s Twitter messages — tweets — in a nice little graphic …

This is an ongoing series of posts about making blogs better. I’ll take a look at what “experts” say we bloggers should be doing to attract more readers and make our blogs more user-friendly, and then I’ll throw in my take. Your input is always welcome, because I’d love to know what you think, especially if you’ve had …

Nobody likes Captcha.
You may not recognize the name, but you’ve no doubt seen what it is: those squiggly, hard-to-read words that you actually have to read and type so that your comment can be posted on someone else’s blog.
Some blogs require everyone to deal with a Captcha automatically.
My blog doesn’t make you do it unless your comment contains certain …

It won’t be this week’s topic, but I’m working on a future edition of Better Blogging that focuses on premium themes versus free ones.  If you’ve ever paid for one, please click the Contact tab at the top of the page and let me know.
Specifically, I’d like to know the following things if you’d be willing to share:

What made you …

Here’s a look at the posts that hit the blog last week (Saturday through Friday) in case you missed anything. They’re organized by most-applicable category for your browsing convenience.
The holiday weekend limited my posting, but there were still a few highlights to be found:

I am feeling…Excited (0) Interested (0) Surprised (0) Angry (0) Sad (0) Bored (0) Amused (0)

I’m usually pretty good at spotting comment spam when I see it. Normally, that’s because the “name” entered winds up being something suspicious like “Stress Management Ideas” or “Christian Dating” or something that is clearly a business-related title.
Most of the time, if the comment is associated with a name I don’t recognize, then I check out the URL entered …

There.  I said it.
Since I switched to this new theme — and very soon there will be an entire post about that experience — there have been a few little issues I’ve had with various sections not displaying quite the way I wanted them to.
One of the first issues I wanted to tackle was the font size.  The default was …

This is a new little idea I decided to experiment with:  it’s a weekly recap of the posts made over the last seven days here at Patrick’s Place.
There’s nothing new in this post, actually; it’s just quick links, by category, to some of the posts I’ve done recently.  Let me know if you like this idea: it’s generated by a …

This is an ongoing series of posts about making blogs better. I’ll take a look at what “experts” say we bloggers should be doing to attract more readers and make our blogs more user-friendly, and then I’ll throw in my take. Your input is always welcome, because I’d love to know what you think, especially if you’ve had …