Be warned, it’s totally addictive. I’ve managed to get my blog speed from 10-13 seconds down to 3 seconds. I’ve also loaded a new plugin “W3 Total Cache”. One odd thing though, I had to turn off page caching – because each time I made changes they wouldn’t show up. I thought I was going insane. I’d make a change, upload it, and refresh the page. Nothing. Restart the browser, nothing. So I turned it off.

I’ve got my blog to 3 seconds – but again, it’s a Saturday – will test again during a weekday when DreamHost is perhaps not so calm. Not sure if that makes any difference. But you have to seriously check out the PageSpeedTest – I love it.

A blogger in Oregon did her own “investigation” on an attorney and was sued for defamation and lost. She claimed she didn’t have to prove her allegations and was protected because she was a journalist, part of the media. Reuters states:

“Media organizations and others are often protected by the “actual malice” legal standard established in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which holds that under the First Amendment, journalists to be liable for defamation must know or have warning signs their inflammatory statements against a public figure are false.”

The blogger was not deemed a “journalist” or part of the “media” by the judge, and therefore her writings were not protected.

I found this part of the Reuters article astounding:

“Attorneys for Padrick presented as evidence a Jan. 19 email from Cox, sent days after she was sued for defamation by Padrick and Obsidian, in which she offered the firm her services “to protect online reputations and promote businesses” for $2,500 a month. Cox denied she was trying to extort money.”

Wow. Let me say it again. Wow. I was curious, so I checked out the blogger’s blog, and indeed, she has “reputation manager” as one of her service offerings. Wow.

Regardless of her motivation, this blogging defamation lawsuit will have a chilling effect on bloggers – it’s what Reuters thinks, and frankly I agree with that. Note the blogger is in Montana and the person defamed was in Oregon. In the Reuters article, it says that Cox (the blogger) plans to appeal the decision.

Is blogging journalism? There are surely journalists who write blogs, but all bloggers aren’t journalists.

Here’s another take on the lawsuit by Forbes: “Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger“. It offers another perspective stating:

“The facts in the case are far more complicated, and after hearing them, most journalists will not want to include Cox in their camp.”

I read this Forbes article, and granted, I can’t imagine a journalist taking out a domain like “thisparticularcompanynamesucks.com” – maybe it’s defamation, maybe it’s whistleblowing, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like journalism. But certainly there are many blog articles that should be considered journalism – I don’t know what the legal definition of journalism is.

Here’s another thought provoking article on this lawsuit: Debate about Crystal Cox blogging case misses a key legal point. Angelotti says that it doesn’t matter whether she was found to be a “journalist” or not, because even if she was, the “shield law” might have not allowed her to make claims without proof:

“My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the AP. “But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information.”

And if you’re a blogger in Washington State, like me, here’s another article by the Seattle Weekly: Crystal Cox, Oregon Blogger, Isn’t a Journalist, Concludes U.S. Court–Imposes $2.5 Million Judgement on Her. This articles has links to other related articles for bloggers in Washington State: Unlike Oregon, Bloggers Are Journalists in Washington State, Do Qualify for Legal Protections.

The Seattle Weekly concludes:

“But it’s also important to note that even if Cox had been awarded shield-law protections in the lawsuit, she still most likely would have lost her case, because she was never able to prove her accusations against Padrick were true, with or without her secret source.

So while Cox’s fate has and should send ripples of concern throughout the blogging and journalism community, the flip side of that coin is that if bloggers are able to post defamatory articles all over the Internet where they will permanently remain, it can have an ill effect on the entire medium of Internet journalism.”

UPDATE: The number came back, magically, by itself. No idea why.

50 Blog Topics for Small Business Owners by Jessica Swanson.

Don’t ignore it, just hit the “Please update now” link and follow the instructions.

WordPress may release updates every month, or every few months, so be sure to log into your blog at least monthly to check for a new version number.

Prevent hacking and viruses – keep your WordPress Blog updated!

He starts out with the most important things to focus on:

• Permalinks (I always do this)
• Titles (yup, this too)
• Descriptions (um, don’t really do this at all for my posts)
• More text (who new you could change this!)
• Image Optimization (those pesky alt tags!)

Enjoy!

Here’s what I saw:

How scary is that?

A few minutes later it changed to this:

A little less scary. But then it changed back to all red. So I send my hosting company, DreamHost, a support ticket to see what’s up. I’m not sure if it’s a hosting issue, or an Akismet issue, but will update this post when I find out.

…sending happy healthy thoughts to the Akismet server…

UPDATE:

DreamHost tech support said that they had some network issues earlier, but it should be resolved now. Sure enough, I went back into Akismet Configuration, rechecked the servers (had to click the button) and they were all green.

So the lesson learned is, if you have Akismet protecting your WordPress blog and it suddenly stops working, check the Network Status via the Akismet Configuration, and if it’s red, contact your hosting company to fix it.

1. Make sure domain names are purchased.
I’m assuming that you’ve already purchased your domain names from DreamHost.com.
If you purchased the domain through another domain registrar, you’ll need to modify the 3 DNS (Domain Name Server) settings to point to DreamHost:
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

2. Host your new domain names at DreamHost.com
Domains -> Manage Domains->Add New Domain
Domain to host: fill in
How do you like the www in your URL: add “www.”
Uncheck Google Apps and Gmail
Leave all other choices at default
Click “Fully host this domain now”

3. Install WordPress
Goodies->One-Click Installs ->Install new website software-Advanced mode
Select WordPress
Install to: select right domain. Can elect to put in subdirectory, which is optional. If the entire website is a blog, don’t put in subdirectory. If website is already there, put in subdirectory (like “blog”).
Create a new database
Make up a database name
Use existing hostname – pick domain
First user: make one up
Password: make one up
Click “install it for me now”
In 10 minutes, you’ll receive email from DreamHost; follow instructions in that email to complete installation process. Make sure you save original admin login password! Yes, you can change it later.

4. Choose a theme
Log in to WordPress admin area.
Click on Appearance.
Choose a theme, see preview.
If you like it, click “activate” in upper right hand corner.
Note, themes are made by other people and there is no guarantee they will function correctly. Be sure to fully test any theme for functionality.

These are the basic steps to setting up a WordPress blog on DreamHost, assuming you have purchased your domain name from DreamHost and already have a hosting account set up with them.

First off, if you are reading this and you are blogging without Akismet, get Akismet. It caches the vast majority of spam. As of the writing of this post, Akismet has caught over 24,000 spams – from my blog alone! So let it do the heavy lifting for you.

For those comments that Akismet misses, you need to determine which are spam, and which are good comments, and which are not spam, but comments that you don’t want to approve. Since marking a comment as spam sends it into the Akismet database, you want to be fairly sure the ones you mark as spam deserve it.

I recently got a comment that fell into this grey category, and I wanted to share with you what I did to make my decision.

Here’s what I got in my email from WordPress:

Notice two things. First it’s from a gmail account, yet the URL is a website to a web design company. I’m always suspicious when there’s a website in the URL field, yet the E-mail field has an unrelated email address. Secondly, notice the generic comment “Thanks for providing such a nice tips”. Not even good english.

So I go and look at my web tracking tool, Web-Stat. I find the visitor by matching the IP address.

Here’s the visit:

Now, the article was on search engine optimization and online stores. So if this is a legitimate comment, I should see those keywords used in the search this person used to find my blog article.

But they used “web design”. Hmmm. And the URL was to a web design company. Now, smart folks know that the most valuable links are from websites that contain keywords that your company uses. So a web design company would love to have a free link from my blog, wouldn’t they?

Based on this, I decide this person has attempted to get a free link to their (or a client’s ) company by posting a fake comment in my blog. I mark it as spam, and send them to Akisment purgatory.

First thing is to pick a blogging application. I highly, highly recommend WordPress. It’s what I use and the only blogging application I install and customize for my clients.

Second thing, is to know the particular technical requirements of your blogging application. For example, you can read about the requirements for WordPress here.

Third thing, is to make sure your hosting company supports those requirement. Don’t worry that you don’t know what they mean. PHP is the language that WordPress is written in, and MySQL is the database part – but just simply ask the hosting company if they support the specific versions – they’ll know what the terms mean.

The fourth thing, is to see if the hosting company has a “one-click-install” feature. You can see this often listed in the long list of web hosting company features. (Here’s an example of the hosting company I use: DreamHost) The one click install is super cool, because it makes installation literally a one-click process, no technical knowledge required.

The fifth thing, is to see if the one-click-install also does one-click-upgrades. WordPress frequently comes out with upgraded versions, and it’s super important to keep your blogging software current. Not only do you get to use the latest and greatest features, but you keep one step ahead of hackers who continually try to figure out ways to hack into your blog. Having a hosting company that supports one-click-upgrades means that whenever a new version of WordPress comes out (and WordPress will automatically notify you of this), you simply go to your hosting company’s control panel and upgrade your blog. Really easy to do – only takes a few minutes.

So that’s the summary of things to look for in a hosting company if you’re going to start a blog and become a blogger.