Has anyone else noticed a large amount of ping backs to link farms from Planet Ubuntu feeds over the last few days? I’m getting a fair few. I’d give an example but if I link to a site that takes my posts from a syndicated site and creates posts that are syndicated on other sites I might create some sort of perpetual motion blog post and consume the Internet (it might seem far fetched but what if Robert Morris had stopped to think).
I find these objectionable though – they appear to be WordPress and I guess are using a plugin to pull feeds in and publish as articles. They’re not as bad as flat out plagiarism – which I’ve experienced. Mind you even that isn’t the worst, I once wrote a howto which was CC licensed and I realised it had been ripped off when someone posted a comment on it suggesting (quite strongly) that I had taken it from the thief!
So it occurs to me that maybe this is a WordPress thing. Then again maybe not. Like so many of us I get stuck in my ways and WordPress is like a pair of comfy shoes. Maybe I should try a new platform, so I wondered what was popular out there in Ubuntu-land.
I’ve tried Drupal (I don’t like it, sorry Emma), Serendipity and Pixie (I quite liked that but baulked at the theming system). Mind you I also have quite a lot of time to myself over the next four months, maybe I should roll my own, I’ve hacked around in PHP but have never developed a large project using it.
So let me know, suggestions on a postcard. Maybe just a comment here will suffice.
I’ve always loved habari (http://habariproject.org)
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I’ve dealt with the same thing; however, I don’t think moving away from WordPress will make any difference whatsoever.
The splogs are harvesting RSS feeds, which are platform-independent. The only way not to get harvested is not to publish an RSS feed – but then, that applies regardless of what blogging platform you use.
Personally, I don’t think the anti-splog benefits of not publishing an RSS feed in any way outweigh the readership benefits of publishing an RSS feed. So, all that’s left is constant vigilance. (There are some WordPress plugins that help with that vigilance, too.)
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Thanks, can you suggest any plugins you’ve used?
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You can try Max Power’s Digital Fingerprint plugin. It’s the one I use, and have successfully found both splogs and outright plagiarism of my content, using it.
Here’s another list, though it’s a couple years old.
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Forget PHP. I could explain why you don’t want to roll your own in PHP but frankly, I haven’t the time or effort for that sort of thing on a cold Saturday morning.
Learn some Python. Learn some Django. You’ll be a better, happier person for it.
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Fair enough – any suggestions on books or tutorials on Django? I’m fairly up to date with Python.
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There are at least a couple of blogging platforms written in Python using the Django framework. There’s Byteflow, which I’ve heard pretty good things about, and Frabjous, which is pretty crappy (I should know; I wrote it).
Honestly, though, unless you want to use it as a way of learning to do something (Frabjous was my teach-myself-Django project at first), I wouldn’t bother rolling your own. There are too many options out there already for you to burn time on it.
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Practical Django Projects (Apress) has a simple webblog as one of its example projects and The Definitive Guide to Django is another good django book from apress – both are available as pdf ebooks which is handy.
Just make sure you get the 2nd edition (updated for django 1.1) or you’ll find alot that doesn’t work (ubuntu 9.10 has v1.1.1 of django)
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Thanks – for anyone looking it up: http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590599969
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Yeah, their site has a great little introduction tutorial that, while not actually a blog, covers 90% of the material needed for a blog.
A blog is a pretty simple application at the end of the day, especially if you outsource comments to a third party service like disqis, etc.
Once you’re familiar with how Django works, you’ll be able to push out a well-featured blog with one eye closed and one hand tied behind your back.
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Excellent, thanks for the advice!
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http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/
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I really like Textpattern. It looks a bit antiquated on first sight, but it’s a very (and I mean _very_) fast and simple PHP blogging engine with really nice and unique concepts. Give it a try by doing the First Steps Tutorial.
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