Today is the first day of Spring and I have decided to give my WordPress blog a thorough house cleaning.
REMOVE COMMENTS
To begin with, since my legitimate comment to SPAM ratio is something like 1:89 (thank goodness for Akismet), and since, in fact, my content receives very few comments, I decided to remove comments from my blog. Doing this removes a target for spammers and also removes a W3C XHTML validation error, which is caused when comments are enabled (see “ARIA and CSS Validation Errors“). At the end of each post, I have added this language (the date and time are appropriate for each post):
This entry was originally posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 2:26 pm. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
CLEANUP CSS CODE
I try very hard to use both W3C valid XHMTL and CSS code. Unfortunately, WordPress core and plugin developers use CSS code that is not valid for CSS level 2.1: the code will thus produce validation errors at W3C. I have therefore removed the “invalid” code from the relevant CSS files. For more information about why developers include CSS code that causes the errors, refer to the article I’ve noted above. In the case of one plugin, I will have to do some styling myself before I reactivate a version that will validate “in the green.”
FOOTER CHANGES
I have added a signature image to the bottom of each page with my contact information as part of the image. Creating an image for contact information allows me to provide contact information without the fear of numerous SPAMS as would be the case with a text email address. I am confident that if you, as a reader, are interested enough to provide me with your personal comments, you will have no problem typing my contact information into your email client and sending them to me. I do like to hear from WordPress enthusiasts — but not spammers.
In the footer, I have also added links to W3C for both XHTML and CSS validation. In this way, I can validate every page on my blog — and so can you. I particularly admire web sites and blogs that can pass both of these validations: this shows that the webmasters have taken “that extra step” to insure that the viewer sees the content as intended.
