Thursday, January 07, 2010

Do Follow and Spam?

When I changed my template on Sunday, I forgot all about changing it so that comments are do follow.  When I went looking for the directions I originally followed, I couldn't find them - the page was missing!  So, I went searching for instructions and found these:
Edit your template HTML with widgets expanded and replace:

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'>

with

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl'>
Basically, just remove the part that says rel='nofollow'.

I did a search (CTRL+F) for comment.authorUrl, deleted the nofollow attribute, and saved my template.

While looking for the directions, I noticed that some people have stopped making their blogs Do Follow because it encouraged spam.  I'm probably asking for it here, but I haven't had a huge problem with spam.  Sure, it happens every once in a while, and I did have one commenter who repeatedly left spammy comments on one post.  I had never used comment moderation until then, but now I have it set so that comments on any posts older than 30 days have to be moderated.  So far that seems to be a decent compromise.

Any comments?  Have you made your blogs Do Follow?  Does it seem to encourage spam, and if so, how do you handle it?

4 comments:

  1. Once again - I have to thank you! I forgot all about this when I changed my template!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the new template. I am do follow. I used to NEVER get spam...well, the occasional here and there. But, within the last two months I had to turn on comment moderation. They were hitting me up to 20 times a day. Mostly it's not even written in English and it's for cialis, penis enlargements, etc. It's horrible! They would put it on older posts and I guess they thought I wouldn't catch it. Mostly they were hitting the same two or three posts. Since I turned on comment moderation it hasn't slowed them down any. I doubt this has anything to do with being do follow, though. I honestly don't think the idiots even know what that means. It never even makes it to the blog and they still keep commenting. It's a hassle, but what else can ya do?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Anna ,

    Thanks for this and thank goodness you have the search bar on your blog. I was remembering for a new blog of mine. Tammy's post was a dead link like you said so I came here and found your new post and link. Cheers! Big help :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know this is an old post but just changed my blog to dofollow and wanted to read others take on whether it caused more spam or not. I have had a little spam even before I changed it yesterday. I guessI will see how it goes.

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments! Keep them coming.