pelf-ism is contagious

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I had recently disabled my Math Comment Spam Protection plugin for reasons also mentioned in the post. And eversince I deactivated the plugin, I’ve been clearing my spam folder by browsing through the hundreds of spam comments in case any of your real comments was marked as spam.

So, I thought perhaps you’d alert me if/when your comment does not get published right away? I promise to free it from among the spam as soon as I possibly can

And if you’re interested to get a copy of the plugin-cum-spam-catcher, visit the official Math Comment Spam Protection plugin website for more information.

If you’d like to leave me a message but it has nothing to do with my recent posts, please do not leave them as comments. I’ve got a new “shoutbox” you can spam put to good use!

Did anybody notice that I deactivated my Math Comment Spam Protection plugin? Did you notice that you no longer have to answer a math question before leaving me a comment?

Well, I deactivated the plugin because of a comment I received not too long ago. A reader said that she had to use her fingers TWICE to to make sure she got the answer correct. So I thought, if it was a problem for her, it could be for other people too. So that was the main reason I removed that plugin.

And boy, was I surprised to find lots and lots of SPAM comments caught by Akismet since I deactivated the plugin! I guess it’s time to think of another alternative to combat spam, without making things more difficult or complicated than it already is. Anybody has any suggestions? Tell all!

On another note, did you also notice that I made adjustments to the links in my blog posts? Previously, all my links were only differentiated with a different (red) colour. And when moused over, the links will be underlined. And then I came across an article (I can’t remember from where I read it) which says that it would be better to have “visual cues” to tell your readers that “this is a link!!” for a couple of reasons. For one, they could be colour blind. Two, they could be using a wonky blank-and-white monitor. Or simply for the fact that your site may (and will) appear differently to other people compared to how perfectly it appears to you on your own computer.

So what I did was to “add that visual cue” to the links in my blog post. Taa-Dah! All links in my posts now have dotted lines underneath, and when moused over, solid lines. The links on my sidebar will remain as they are because those are understood as links. Plus, those stuff on the sidebars aren’t as important as those in the main content, no?