My name is Jonathan Bailey and I usually blog at Plagiarism Today, where I write about content theft, plagiarism and copyright issues on the Web. Lorelle has asked me to fill in while she’s away with a few posts to keep things a little bit more active. So please pardon the change in voice and fret not as Lorelle will return soon.

The good news is that WordPress.com is a relatively spam and garbage-free site. The bad news is that, even on the best blogging sites, with the most vigilant admins, sometimes spammers, scrapers and other bad guys do manage to set up shop.

It’s easy to see why spammers would want to get on WordPress.com, with a PageRank of 9, great SEO and a built-in community, it could be haven for junk content. Many do try but the admins have been surprisingly effective, for the most part, at keeping them at bay.

This isn’t to say that they are perfect. They can’t pre-screen everything that is posted to the site and some do get through. The site depends on users to report spam, copyright infringements and other forms of unwanted content so it can be cleaned up.

However, there is a correct way to file such complaints. As great as Lorelle is, she is not an official representative of Automattic, the maintainers of WordPress.com, and Matt Mullenweg, though the founder and CEO, is not the person directly responsible.

If you want a quick resolution to a WordPress.com abuse complaint, all you have to do is follow the instructions on this page. However, if you want more details or advice, read below.

Copyright Complaints

As someone who has filed hundreds of copyright complaints over the years, I can say without a doubt that Automattic has been very responsive to copyright complaints. However, there is a very strict protocol that one needs to follow in order to have their complaint acted upon.

Automattic is a U.S.-based company and its servers are located with in the country. As such, it is bound by U.S. law, most notable the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This law provides a safe harbor to Web hosts, such as Automattic, to prevent them from being held liable for copyright infringement perpetrated by their users without their knowledge.

The caveat is that hosts are required to “expeditiously” remove or disable access to infringing content once they receive proper notification. The law itself lays down strict requirements for what constitutes a proper DMCA notice.

As such, though Automattic does comply with the DMCA and remove content very quickly when properly notified, it is filing the proper notification that is tricky.

If you find that a blog on WordPress.com is infringing YOUR copyright. You can file a DMCA takedown notice by using the email address at this page and using the stock DMCA notice to host available on my site.

If you properly fill out and send in a DMCA notice, most likely the content will be removed in 1-2 business days.

Spam, Spam, Spam

If you find a spam blog operating on WordPress.com but it isn’t infringing on your copyright, either posting excerpts, using gibberish or someone else’s content, you can still be able to report them to Automattic and get the blog removed if it is a violation of their terms of service.

The Spam blog reporting tool is extremely simple to use. All you have to provide is the URL of the blog, ensuring that it is a WordPress.com blog, and stating the reason that you think it is a spam blog.

If it’s scraping content from another site, link to the original site. If it is posting junk content, say so. Provide any evidence you can that the site is a spam blog and try to make it easy for the person processing the complaint to understand what the issue is. A few sentences of clarification can help speed up the process greatly.

Other Content

WordPress.com has a strict policy about protecting user freedom of speech. Though Automattic may remove defamatory content, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not require them to do so.

WordPress.com also allows mature content on the site, so long as it is properly flagged and removed from public searches.

In short, unless the content is illegal or threatening, Automattic will be very hesitant to take any action. Still, if you wish to report something that you feel is a violation of the site’s terms of service, you can file your report by emailing the support@ address.

Caveat

It is important to remember that this only applies to sites that are hosted on the WordPress.com servers. Just because a site users WordPress as the blogging platform does not mean that they are on the WordPress.com servers.

Millions of blogs use WordPress as the platform but are hosted on other servers and are beyond Automattic’s control. In those cases, they merely produce the software that used to make the blog work, they do not run the blog or the servers it is on. It would be like blaming Microsoft for unwanted content generated using Word.

Before filing a complaint with Automattic, make sure that WordPress.com is in the URL of the site. You can also double check the host of the site by using Who Is Hosting This?.

Though the confusions is understandable, it is important to make sure that it is a WordPress.com site, not a WordPress.org (meaning self-hosted) before reporting to Automattic.

Bottom Line

When it comes to matters of copyright and spam, Automattic does a great job in removing the garbage when properly notified.

The difference in the time it takes to file a complaint the right way and simply shouting to the first person who will listen is negligible. However, it can be the difference between getting a swift response or no answer at all.

Any time you report abuse to a site, you should take a moment to familiarize yourself with that site’s policies and act accordingly. A few minutes of preparation and planning can literally save days in response time.

You are Welcome to this Weblog hosted at http://wordpress.com.
Though we have a custom domain, we thought maybe we should also try the wonderful free services provided by http://wordpress.com.

Here on this weblog we would try to post matter/content relating to Damdami Taksaal and sikhi, and would stick to the Damdami Taksaal’s viewpoint because it is our opinion that Taksaal’s viewpoint is authentic and elite.

Happy Reading…

P2: The New Prologue is out for WordPress.com bloggers to play with. Based upon the Prologue WordPress Theme that has been called Twitter-Meets-Blog, this is a form of social networking microblogging WordPress Theme.

The announcement offers more information and a video, but this is not a WordPress Theme for everyone. It is designed for multiple contributor blogs or groups, allowing people to communicate Twitter-style with each other. The WordPress Development Updates blog uses Prologue. WordPress developers tweet their patches, collaborate, share what they are working on, and boost each other through the process, though recently it has also been used as a general blog, breaking the one-line-per-post rule, which shows the flexibility of the Theme.

The features include:

• Live notifications.
• Easy participation by multiple contributors.
• Posting from the front page of the blog – without using the WordPress Administration Panels.
• Comments on the front page of the site with in-line editing (no page refresh) with AJAX.
• Threaded comment display on the front page, as well as on single post pageviews.
• Live tag suggestion.
• Show/hide feature for threaded comments.
• Keyboard shortcuts for faster posting and navigation.
• Feeds for the blog, comments, authors, tags, searches, and more.

Some may want to activate the P2 WordPress Theme on their current blog, which is a fairly dramatic change. It’s currently a plain white page with the focus on the content. User’s comments are highlighted in the sidebar with their Gravatars next to their name and the post title they commented on.

This is a great Theme to use in addition to your main blog, especially if you are working with a group of people and you want to set up a group only discussion and collaboration system.

Or if you are into microblogging, this could be your new WordPress Theme.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordPress.com warns that the free blog hosting service will be down for maintenance starting Sunday, February 15, 2009, at 20:00 GMT (noon PST, 3PM EST) for maintenance and upgrade improvements. This should only be a few seconds to a couple minutes. This does not impact full version and self-hosted versions of WordPress.

The maintenance probably involves upgrading to WordPress 2.7.1, server improvements, and possibly the reported news of some “cool gallery features” that may add navigation links for image pages, and other small improvements. Do not expect any major changes to the interface or functionality.

They warn that unsaved work with be lost and you may have to log in again once the system is restored. This means that if you are in the middle of blogging something, it will not be saved and auto-save will not kick in to backup your posts.

I recommend that you save everything you are working on at least two hours before the maintenance down time begins, just in case. If you “need” to blog something, write it up in a text editor or (at the very worst) a word processor and save it there until you can copy and paste or paste using the Word quicktag button in the Visual Text Editor. This is a worst case scenario warning just to be safe.

These maintenance “moments” are rare with WordPress.com. According to Barry in the comments below, expect WordPress.com to be back fully active in less than two minutes.

While waiting for WordPress.com to come back online, consider checking out the I <3 Blogging Design Contest and entering your graphic design to define why you love blogging and WordPress. If your graphic design wins, it could be printed and sold on laptop and iPhone skins around the world through the Infectious store.

Site Search Tags: WordPress.com, WordPress, WordPress.com news, news, maintenance, wordpressdotcom, wordpressdotcom news, upgrade, WordPress 2.7.1

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

WordPress.com bloggers now have a new resource for help: the WordPress Help Pages.

Heather of the WordPress.com Support Team announced the new WordPress.com support. It features a knowledge-based style with overviews features and tasks.

I’ve covered a lot of tips and techniques for using WordPress.com, and here are some highlights, including a lot of features and things you can do with your WordPress.com blog not included in the new help pages:

• What Do I Do With My New WordPress.com Blog?
• What Can You Do With WordPress.com
• Playing with WordPress.com New Sidebar Widgets
• WordPress.com Top Blogs of the Day
• WordPress.com Custom CSS – All The Styles for the Sandbox Theme
• WordPress.com Resources for Beginners (and video, too)
• WordPress.com, Please Stop Using Snap Preview
• WordPress.com Blog Bling
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Decorating Your WordPress.com Blog
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Lines and Smilies
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Fun Font Bling
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Blockquotes and Quotes
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Blogroll and Sidebar Bling
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Signatures and Writing Code
• Adding Video and Podcasting Bling to Your WordPress.com Blogs
• WordPress.com Blog Bling: Show Off Your Blog Bling

For more WordPress News, see the latest edition of my Blog Herald WordPress News: WordPress News: WordPress 2.7 Awesome, WordPress.com 5 Million, Plugins Updated, and WordCamp News.

Site Search Tags: wordpress, wordpress news, wordpress tips, wordpress help, wordpress 2.7, wordpress 2.8, poll, wordpress ideas, wordpress versions, wordpress development

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Hey everyone.  Have you noticed my new favicon (the little picture to the left of my blog’s url address in your browser bar)?  WordPress.com, the best free blogging service by far, now offers blog images, which double as favicons.  You can upload your own image from the Settings menu (top left of the dashboard next below the Support tab).

My quandry is I really think I should redesign the header to match it.  I designed this a long time back, before I really realized favicons weren’t possible for wordpress.  So I can’t hunt down the cross image I used for this, to use in redesigning my header, so I may have to redesign everything.

I added a larger version of the favicon at the top of my sidebar (not quite as large as the one in this post).  For now I’ll leave it like this.  But I may get the designer in me going again.

So I thought I’d ask: What do you think of the current blog header? Or theme?  Does it jive with the favicon?  Should I change it?  Are you happy with everything as is?  (I know I tend to change things up around here too often….)  I’m interested in your thoughts.  Thanks.

404 Tech Support has just published step-by-step instructions on how to addMyFreeCopyright.com to your WordPress.com or WordPress blog.

The directions are specific to WordPress.com, but will work for any blog or website. It’s also a prime example of how to use the WordPress Widget to add text to your sidebar. The code used in the example is straight HTML and not JavaScript, which is not permitted with WordPress.com blogs.

MyFreeCopyright.com offers a simple way of tracking potential copyright violations of your blog’s content. It isn’t protection. It merely advises people that your content is copyrighted, which it is by default, and alerts you when a possible copyright violation is found through your feed content compared to other sites. You can then take appropriate action against the copyright violator.

What MyFreeCopyright does best is to remind and educate everyone on the importance of copyright, how to protect your content from copyright violations, and help you decide what your copyright policy should be.

If you want control over your blog content, and you want people to ask first before using your content without permission, you have to be clear in your copyright policy. If you want to give your blog content, images, and multimedia away for free without permission, you also have to make that very clear as you are the copyright holder and can do whatever you want, but reading minds isn’t part of the process.

Related Articles

• Who’s Talking About You and Your Blog
• WordPress Plugins Battling Evil
• Modern Crusader: Plagiarism Today with Jonathan Bailey
• Stop Content Theft Buttons and Badges
• Applaud Those Who Warn You: Your Blog’s Content Is Being Stolen
• Copyrights and the Blogger: Protect What is Yours
• Maxpower’s Digital Fingerprint WordPress Plugin Updated
• AntiLeech Splog Stopper: Fighting Back Against Content Thieves
• Digital Fingerprints Help Track Blog Content Theft
• The Bitacle Battle of Blogs
• Reporting Spam Blogs – Splogs
• Do You Need Permission to Link to Someone’s Content?
• Biggest Copyright Infringement in the World But Nobody Cares Enough
• The Growing Trends in Content Theft
• Finding Stolen Content and Copyright Infringements
• What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
• Splogs on the Rise on Blogspot
• Protecting Your Content From the Spinning Spammers
• The Evil Linking of Sploggers and Scrapers Messing With Your …
• If You See This, The Content Is Stolen
• Reporting Blog Content Thieves
• Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Last week I experimented with LoudTwitter, a tool used to post your Twitter tweets to your blog. I wasn’t sure it would work with a WordPress.com blog, but it does. However, with the number of complaints from readers, it was not welcome on this blog.

LoudTwitter publishes your Twitter tweets in a blog post once a day on your blog using XML-RPC. It will work on self-hosted versions of WordPress and WordPress.com blogs. Just sign up your blog and fill in the information, click through the email verification, set the time you want it posted, and it will automatically post that day’s worth of Twitter tweets on your blog.

It’s important to bring your Twitter posts into some social media services, and your blog posts and other social media services into Twitter, but I’m not sure if Twitter really belongs in a blog post unless you are very active on Twitter and the content within your tweets is extremely valuable to your readers. Having spent a lot of time digging through Twitter over the past year, I’m still hunting for timeless content. It’s there, but it’s like sifting for diamonds among the dust.

Here’s why my experiment didn’t work with LoudTwitter on this blog.

1. Content Not Interesting or Valuable to Readers: While investment opportunities can be overheard at the right parties, if you are at the right party with the right people at the right time, most tweets have little value. A collection of tweets is just a one-sided conversation that may or may not be relevant to your blog’s focus and topic. No one cares much were you are, what you are eating, what television shows you are watching, or your views on politics unless they are friends, family, or obsessed with those particular things. These have nothing to do with your blog on car repair. Or jewelry making. Or building a business. Unless the Twitter content adds to and complements your blog content, it’s not interesting to the readers.
2. Lack of Category Control: LoudTwitter has no method currently to post the Twitter Tweets to a specific blog post category. It just dumps your Twitter stream direction into a blog post called “Twitter Tweets” in your default post category. This means that if “uncategorized” is your default post category, it is found there. If LoudTwitter had category control, then the content could be put into a category of its own on your blog. You could move that category off your front page and even out of your blog post feed. Those digging for those tidbits of information found within your tweets could still find it, and those wanting to monitor your tweets on your blog could do so. There are better ways to monitor your tweets away from your blog and no one wants to see them as full blown blog posts. Really?
3. No Control Over Post Titles: LoudTwitter publishes the post title as “Twitter Tweets”, though it does allow you to add content to the beginning and end of your blog post Twitter Tweet summaries. In your most recent post listing, the reader will see:
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets
   • Twitter Tweets

   Not very helpful post titles. WordPress won’t allow duplicate post title names, so the permalink becomes twitter-tweets-2, twitter-tweets-3, and so on. Not very SEO friendly nor informative.

4. It’s a One-Sided Conversation: Not only are Twitter tweets probably not relevant to your blog’s content, it’s a one-sided conversation. Without the other side of the conversation, there is a huge loss of context. It’s like walking into a conversation just as someone says something that could be a foot-in-the-mouth comment if you don’t know what preceded it. It’s confusing and often useless information.
5. No Editing Capability on Twitter: I work very hard to ensure my blog posts are as clean and neat as any term paper with careful attention to grammar and spelling – even though some slip through. However, Twitterers tend to tweet while walking down the street, talking on the phone, and doing other distracting things like driving which causes a lot of errors. They also abbreviate terms and phrases that might make no sense to the uninitiated. Once a tweet is released on Twitter, you can’t easily take it back and edit it. To then have it re-published on your blog compounds your gaf.
6. No Tweets Today? Then What? Busy with recent speaking gigs and traveling, I’ve been offline more than on, so what happens when you aren’t twittering? What’s published on your blog? This Twitter Tweets is an example of what happens. I don’t quite understand why there are two tweets when I wasn’t on Twitter, but there it is. Literally nothing is posted. What good is a wasted empty post? It doesn’t serve your readers. A conditional option would be beneficial to restrict LoudTwitter (or its equivalent) to not publish if you have less than 2 tweets in a day.

Here is an example of the one-sided conversation from my recent experiment.

# 11:46 Idiot Alert: I recorded video atbwe08 vertical not horizontal. ARGH! How do I flip or rotate digital video?
# 11:59 @vegasgeek yep!!! Lay down video – new style. Everyone lays down. So used to still, didn’t think about horz vs vert. SIGH.
# 11:59 @wiredprworks Will be posting how WordPress changed your life video and video of talk after weekend’swordcampportland. Going to ROCK!
# 12:20 @GlendaWH Hey, my new dear friend! lorelleonwordpress at gmail – Your video is ~3 minutes on how WordPress changed your life!
# 12:21 @vegasgeek LOL That’s the solution for sure. But I like the idea of 200 people laying down to watch much better. Fun atwordcampportland!
# 12:53 @bkajino Can’t wait forwordcampportland You know I’m also talking about Woopra??? Will have some goodies for those attending, I hope!
# 12:54 OMG Did you all see that I’m on the cover of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine?! Bunch of my articles in there. Wow! Didn’t know untilbwe08
# 13:11 @GlendaWH Can’t find your card – found Darrell’s so I emailed him with notes. CAn’t wait!!!
# 13:18 Ever have one of those days when you wonder why you blog? Back frombwe08 I shouldn’t but tired out. Need kick.
# 14:21 @WatershedStudio Blogger and Podcaster Rock Star? right? I was so stunned to see my name on the cover. I’m just little ol’ me.
# 14:22 @gregbd Right, but not separate. Your blog is yr online resume today. Social business model circles around it. Start blog first then social
# 14:45 Idiot Alert Off. FOUND IT! How to flip a vertical video back to horizontal. is.gd/31N1 Simple and easy! Whew.
# 14:56 Michael Moore giving away next movie tinyurl.com/5dkqm8 Slacker Uprising. Another example of how free giveaways make money?
# 16:13 @vegasgeek What dates are you thinking for WordCamp Vegas? WordCamp Denver scheduling for Jan and don’t want to overlap.
# 20:28 4 WordCamps this weekend: Portland, Toronto, Utah, Vancouver(BC) WordPresswordcamp weekend!
# 22:06 @MikePerry Thanks. It was a surprise to me atbwe08. Great timing. Blogger and Podcaster Magazine doing some interesting stuff lately.
# 22:07 YEAH! Raw fooder! Check out the raw food porn book “Raw” by Charlie Trotter. Too much trouble to cook but sexy pics.
# 22:08 @vegasgeek Denver wanted the same dates for their WordCamp. Will let them know and maybe they can change them. Thanks much!
# 22:14 @gregbd BuddyPress WordPress Theme on steroids is doing that as are others. Connecting the dots. We need more dot connectors to stop scatter.

Can you really follow it? Does it really add value to this blog?

Twitter is invaluable. With help from those following me, I was able to quickly find a method to flip videos I’d made at Blog World Expo from vertical to horizontal. I was also able to help WordPress and Woopra users find the help and information they needed. I was also easily able to promote my upcoming events and speaking gigs as well as other WordPress events.

It’s the value of my tweets and using LoudTwitter on my blog that I question. If you are hosting Twitter tweets with any service on your blog, is it really helpful? Do you have category and post title control? Does it really benefit your readers?

Site Search Tags: twitter, tweets, loudtwitter, twitter blog posts, social media, experiment, testing loudtwitter, tweets on your blog, blog tweets, publishing twitter tweets, publishing twitter, microblog, microblogging

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Matt Mullenweg has just announced that you can go “ad-free” on your WordPress.com blog.

While you may have never noticed, those who are not logged into WordPress.com will see ads on blogs across the WordPress.com network. two years ago, WordPress.com started experimenting with Google ads to help support the cost of the experimental and state-of-the-art multiple user free blog service. The intent was not to cover your blogs with ads, like many free blogging services do, but to show an occasional ad discretely within your WordPress Theme.

Since few complained or noticed, the experiment continued, helping to keep WordPress.com free and add a lot of free features that might have been paid upgrades.

These ads were so rare, I never saw them. So I forgot about them. I’ve written a lot about the WordPress.com Terms of Service policy that prohibits adding ads to your WordPress.com blogs, so I was dismayed a few months ago when I got a few emails accusing me of special favors from WordPress.com because I had ads on my blog. They were seeing the WordPress.com experimental ads. Unfortunately, one of the ads was – shall we say – inappropriate, a problem many have with Google’s ad program.

Still, this bothered me. I talked to the WordPress team about this and they agreed that users should have the right to determine whether or not to have WordPress.com ads on their blogs. As Matt explains:

At the same time it’s easy to imagine blogs that would never want ads on them: businesses, startups, non-profits, political activist sites, the list goes on. Google Adsense analyzes the content to show contextually relevant ads, but that might mean a link to a competitor. Because of this we’ve introduced a premium option that gives you control: the No-ads upgrade.

They’ve been working on this new feature for a while, trying to come up with a secure and affordable way for users to continue to support WordPress.com by permitting ads on their blogs, while allowing those with sensitive or special interests to not host ads. They’ve finally done it, and I applaud their foresight and integrity.

Removing Ads from Your WordPress.com Blog

Before you start jumping to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, remember that those ads, most of which you will rarely ever see, help bring in income to keep WordPress.com going. If they don’t bother you or your readers, leave them alone. Why not?

You are using one of the most powerful, state-of-the-art blogging platforms, a service that will survive the Digg-effect and high traffic surges without charging you; a service that keeps bringing you options and features without charge; a service that gives you a platform upon which to express yourself proudly – and is incredibly SEO friendly. Why not help them continue to keep this service free for everyone?

If you do feel a compelling need to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, go to Upgrades.

Scroll down to No-ads and select the option.

The cost to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog is 30 credits annually (USD $30 if you haven’t earned any credits) which comes to eight cents a day.

Whether you keep or remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, why not take a little time to give back to WordPress.com and other WordPress.com users by browsing the WordPress blog network and get to know your fellow WordPress.com members. You can use the Random Post feature in the gray dashboard bar at the top of your WordPress.com blog when you are logged in, or visit the WordPress.com Blogs of the Day which lists the most popular blogs by language, or the WordPress.com Tags list.

If you are familiar with how WordPress.com works, then why not help out in the WordPress.com forums and get to know the volunteers and staff there as well as your other fellow WordPress.com members. It’s a simple way to say thank you for this powerful free blog service.

I Want to Put Ads on My WordPress.com Blog

A lot of WordPress.com bloggers want to put ads on their blogs to make money for themselves. While some free blog hosts permit that, don’t forget that WordPress.com is also a testing site for many of the latest features of WordPress development.

While the world has to wait for the release of WordPress 2.7, WordPress.com users are already using the new sticky post feature and will soon be playing with other new features as part of the new WordPress Administration interface redesign, a continuation of user interface improvements from the previous version of WordPress – long before anyone else.

This means that WordPress.com has to stay clean of code that will screw up not just one blog but all the blogs on the WordPress.com network powered by WordPressMU. While most ad code is harmless, opening up WordPress.com to Javascript and other code languages opens the door up to malicious code, too. It’s a security risk WordPress.com isn’t willing to take, and I support that policy.

If you want to monetize your blog, get the free version of WordPress and pay for cheap hosting. Some hosts are offering web hosting for under USD $10 a month. With the full version of WordPress, you can not only add ads, but customize the whole look, add all kinds of cool WordPress Plugins, and really tweak your whole site to maximize its revenue potential.

WordPress.com has always been about blogging, about freedom of expression and creativity. It’s not about the code. It’s about the words. WordPress.com is working overtime to make sure we have a place to share our words with others around the world – no holds barred.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

In 2006, I completed a year long informal study on several of my blogs about the best times and days for me to publish content on my blogs and published what I learned in When is the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog? My conclusions were that Mondays and Tuesdays were the highest traffic days, thus the best days for publishing content with the hopes to be seen by regular readers, and that I needed to publish my posts prior to 0400 EST for my content to be there before my readers showed up.

With the improvements in the WordPress.com stats feature (available for self-hosted blogs with the WordPress.com Stats WordPress Plugin), I’ve been noticing another interesting trend that supports my original conclusions.

There is a clear cyclical nature to my blog traffic, which drops every weekend. In this example of my daily stats across a month, the low points on the chart are:

• Saturday, May 17
• Sunday, May 18
• Saturday, May 24
• Sunday, May 25
• Saturday, May 31
• Sunday, June 1
• Saturday, June 7
• Sunday, June 8

Monday and Tuesday are high traffic, with the numbers dropping towards the weekend, except for the occasional drift upwards for a day due to a popular post released midweek.

When I compare the numbers across six months, this cyclical nature is not as clear as it is close up, day by day. It’s there. In spite of the traffic spikes, the cyclical up and down of the weekends continues. There is consistent growth, but the weekend downturns keep the growth slow by averaging out the daily numbers. Looking at just the numbers doesn’t help. Seeing the visual chart does. And seeing it across weeks shows slips down in my blog stats, right?

Many stats watchers freak out when they concentrate on the day-to-day stats. Like watching the stock market too closely, decisions are made without looking at the big picture. I’ve heard panic from many bloggers who scream their stats have suddenly plunged. When you change the view from day-to-day to week-to-week, or even month-to-month, the picture changes. It’s now about the big picture of trends, not the daily fluctuation, some of them normal but noticed for the first time.

Since blog statistics were introduced at the end of 2005 on WordPress.com blogs, my blog has seen steady growth over the years. By focusing on the long term, I see the big picture of growth and stop worrying about the day-to-day fluctuation – unless I want to learn something from those statistics.

In this case, my conclusions from early in 2006 were supported. There is a weekend fluctuation in the numbers that I’ve been able to track for the past two years, in addition to the historical research I did in 2006. Mondays and Tuesdays continue to be my best days for traffic.

This applies to my blogs and would be different in different cultures and countries, as well as different blog subject matters. Have you looked at the different groups of stats available on your blog and found similar or different conclusions?

And if you are still daily checking in with your stats, stop it. Live a little. Spend more time writing quality content, not checking the numbers. The numbers over weeks and months will tell you more about how your blog is doing than the daily obsession checks. However, there is still something to be learned from the daily numbers, when compared to the overall whole health of your blog traffic.

Related Articles

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• Blog Resources: Researching the Research, Finding the Facts, and Seeking Supporting Evidence
• The Real Hidden Value of Old Post Traffic
• Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins
• What Blog Statistic Gets Most of Your Attention?
• Investigating the Connections Between Blogging Styles and Traffic Stats

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

As discussed in WordPress.com Banned Again: Why Aren’t You Concerned?, WordPress.com continues to be a target for censorship and blocking from various countries and groups around the world attempting to penalize the whole for the “wrongs” of the few the courts or governments decide to penalize, those cutting off thousands of blogs from access.

I was also recently blocked from accessing Gmail and this WordPress.com blog from a free hotel WIFI in Chicago, which inspired me to write How Do You Know If Your Blog is Banned or Blocked? on the Blog Herald, as your blog can be blocked from anywhere at any time, not just by a country or legal decision. Bans and blocks can happen from companies, educational institutions, public WIFI access points, Internet Providers, and more.

I contacted WordPress.com support about the options and did some digging to find out how WordPress.com bloggers were getting around the blocks and what WordPress.com bloggers can do.

According to WordPress.com support, mapping your domain to a WordPress.com account will not avoid the blocks that ban by IP address. The request goes to the WordPress.com nameservers which trigger the blocks. So adding the Domain Mapping feature will not get around the bans.

However, working with client side proxy software or online web proxy servers, using web proxy browser extensions, and some other techniques allow web savvy users to bypass most of these blocks and filters not only to read the blocked blogs but access and blog on blocked blog services.

Here are some options to try to access a blocked WordPress.com blog as well as other blocked or banned sites.

Client Side Proxy Software

By installing client side proxy software, you can get get around strong firewalls like the ones in China, a technique used by many high tech companies inside and outside of China, often developed by technology experts in Chinese companies.

Client side proxy software allows a user to securely bypass content-filtering systems set up by governments and corporate networks. According to Wikipedia regarding Psiphon, a popular web proxy program, it is described as:

…a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored, [which] turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere.

By bypassing the blocks, the web is an open door. Some popular proxy software include:

• UltraSurf
• Gpass
• Java Anon Proxy
• Psiphon
• Blue Coat
• Privoxy
• SafeSquid
• Squid Cache

Online Web Proxy Bypass Sites

There are a variety of online web proxy bypass sites which allow free access to blocked and banned sites. They have a variety of features and abilities, and may take several tries and testing of options to access some banned and blocked sites. By using online proxy sites, the site blocks your IP address and other information, allowing your visit to the site to go through without interference.

These sites may not always allow you access to blog on a blocked blog, but they do permit reading and often commenting on most banned blogs and sites. To access a banned or blocked blog as the blog owner and contributor, enter the WordPress.com login URL.

Visit the site and enter the blocked site’s URL into the form. You can use their default proxy services or select from various options to access the blocked site.

There are many online web proxy server sites, and a few popular ones include:

• Anonymouse.org
• findwealth.info
• freebrowse.info
• Good Waiter
• netonomous.net
• surfingtoday.info
• wikiproxy.com
• FilterNot – Bypass Internet Filters
• surfingstore.info
• proxy.org

Using a Peer-to-Peer Content Distribution Network

You can also get around some blocks using a peer-to-peer content distribution network, such as Coral CDN. A content distribution network (CDN) is what popular file sharing networks are based upon, server-based networks with content-delivery, request-routing, file distribution, and accounting infrastructures. By maximizing bandwidth and time savings by content replication across the servers, access is faster and cheaper through the network than by relying upon one server located thousands of miles away. A web user can also navigate through the content distribution network to hide or confuse their IP address, thus allowing access to banned or blocked sites.

Corel offers easy bypassing of some firewall and site blocks by adding .nyud.net or .nyud.net:8090 to the URL of the site. For a WordPress.com site:

http://example.wordpress.com/

would be

http://example.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/

To use this with my article on Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide, the link would be:

http://lorelle.wordpress.com.nyud.net:8090/2006/01/15/dyi-search-engine-optimization/

You can do this manually, or use one of the Coral Clients for Firefox, Greasemonkey, Opera, and Internet Explorer or one of the Corel browser plugins. It will work with Windows, Max, Linus, BSD, and most other operating systems.

If you are offering content specifically for readers often found behind firewalls, why not help them by adding the Coral link code to your outgoing links so they can access blocked and banned content without stress nor struggle.

Browser Extensions

There are a few browser extensions and add-ons that will help you get through various firewalls. Choose one appropriate to your web browser.

• PhProxy – InBasic Firefox Add-ons
• Proxytex FireFox Exention
• IE7Pro with web proxy protection
• Proxy Offline Browser
• TorButton for Firefox
• FoxyProxy for Firefox
• Gladder (Great Ladder) FireFox Extension
• BlockStop Proxy Firefox Add-on
• Tor-Proxy.NET Toolbar
• SwitchProxy Tool for Firefox
• Access from China, Firefox edition
• Access from China, Safari (under Mac) edition

More Solutions to Bypass Firewalls and Bans

Tor is a privacy project and program run by volunteers that works by bouncing your online communications around a distributed network of relays, similar to a content distribution network but the project is designed to block tracking and spying on your Internet activity. It protects your privacy such as blocking your physical site location and works with web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote logins and other TCP protocol access applications. By blocking information on your web traffic stats and path, Tor may help some uses bypass firewalls and blocks to access, and does protect your private information from being tracked completely, which is why many recommend the Tor Bundle, which includes Tor, TorCP and Privoxy.

You can also add an Automatic proxy configuration file to your computer and browser that will type into your browser, such as FireFox, to bypass some preventions. For information and details see:

• Access Blogger and WordPress Blogs in China
• How To Spot A Blogspot and WordPress.com Blog (A Quick Fix)
• Hiding Your IP Address Using HTTP, CONNECT, CGI/PHP/WEB, SOCKS proxies
• Another way to visited the banned blogspot and WordPress.com
• Proxy Hacks – I.(Updated) Blocked at workplace? Setting up a home proxy for WordPress.com and other sites. Browse all blocked sites and run all messengers.

For more information on the variety of techniques and tips for bypassing most firewall restrictions and blocks, see:

• How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet
• HOWTO bypass Internet Censorship, a tutorial on getting around Internet blocks and filters
• How to Surf the Web Anonymously With Proxies
• How To Bypass Internet Censorship And Filters: A Guide To Filters and Anonymous Browsing
• 9 Firefox Extensions to Protect Your Privacy

China is not the only one blocking WordPress.com, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, and many other social networking, bookmarking, and blog sites. Recent blocks include Brazil and Turkey. You can learn more on Internet censorship on Wikipedia and Internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China.

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• The Committee to Protect Bloggers – Risking Your Life for Your Words
• Biggest Copyright Infringement in the World But Nobody Cares Enough
• Full Disclosure on Corporate and Commercial Blogs
• Michael Crichton – Freedom of Speech vs. Patented Speech
• Mean Spirited Comments and Blogging
• Just a Reminder About Freedom: Blogging Comes With a Price
• Freedom of Speech – Bloggers Legal Rights

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.