MyBlogLog is Getting Spammy

This is really getting kinda sad. What used to be a great blogging community where users share ideas and communicate with each other — yes, I am referring to MyBlogLog — has now crossed over to the dark side… a more spammy side.

I rarely receive legit comments now. Most of the comments that I receive… Continue reading...

Prevent Spam Blogs in WordPress MU

Spammers are becoming increasingly annoying and tricky nowadays by using Black Hat techniques to boost their websites’ search engine rankings (usually parked pages with tons of ads, which, in return = $$$).

A Little Background

At first, they targeted free blog hosts like Blogspot and Wordpress with automated blog generating programs to create hundreds of spam blogs… Continue reading...

New Year, New Theme

As you can see, Eastwood Zhao dot COM now has a new theme! My blog’s now running on the Orange Web 2.0 theme by Ericulous.

I like this much better than the other one for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s a lot cleaner; I’ve stripped away all the annoying pay-per-click ads… Continue reading...

How to Make Wordpress Smilies

Do you use smilies in your posts?

To include smilies in Wordpress is actually quite easy: simply type out the punctuation marks !

Ooo… so that’s how John Chow does his twisted evil smiles! :twisted… Continue reading...

WordPress 2.3 - Fatal error: Cannot redeclare register_sidebars() - No Widgets Required!

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare register_sidebars() (previously declared in eastwoodzhao.com/wp-includes/widgets.php:15) in eastwoodzhao.com/wp-content/plugins/widgets/widgets.php on line 42
Is that what you saw after upgrading to WordPress 2.3 and activating your Automattic Widgets Plugin?

The problem, obviously, lies within the Widgets plugin. The solution is beyond simple. No worries! With version 2.3, Widgets are automatically included within the WordPress backbone. That’s… Continue reading...

New Wordpress Theme - 3 Columns with Ads

Here is it! After struggling for quite a bit, I finally managed to implement this new Wordpress theme.

What do I like about this theme over the previous ones I’ve had? This has 3-columns, really giving me a lot of room to expand with ads and larger images.

I’d really like to hear from you! What do… Continue reading...

Wordpress Domain Permalink Permanent Redirect — Important SEO Tip!

If you were to type eastwoodzhao.com into your browser, you would be redirected automatically over to www.eastwoodzhao.com

How is that important for your website & domain name, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-wise?

Search engines often regard www.eastwoodzhao.com and eastwoodzhao.com as two different websites unless you take specific measures to signal to them that they… Continue reading...

My Blog Host

Great news everyone! This blog is now hosted by HostMonster, which give me the following features:

300 Gigabytes of Hosting Space

Host UNLIMITED Domains!!

Unlimited Pop/Imap Email Accounts

SSH Access (Secure Shell)

3,000 Gigs of Transfer

SSL, FTP, Stats

CGI, Ruby (RoR), Perl, PHP, MYSQL

Front Page Extensions

Free Domain Forever

Free Site Builder

Live Support 24/7

I’m paying $5.95/month. On top… Continue reading...

Akismet Admin Problem (35) Fixed?

error 35 message has disappeared! After accumulation up to 120 spam messages, the plugin fixed itself on its own!

I think it could have originated from a MySQL bug that related specifically to that one page of spam comments?… Continue reading...

Wordpress Theme Updated - Light Theme by VagueDream

Over the weekend, I manged to update my Wordpress theme. I used to use Binary Blue, and it was getting buggy for Internet Explorer. I probably had too much content on my blog, and as a result, decided to go for a cleaner theme. Now, I use Light theme, by Vaguedream.

The plugins upgraded… Continue reading...