Mugsy

I’m not sure I understand “can’t post” but “use captcha’s on posts”.

But no matter, the math “Captcha” plugin is downloadable from the WordPress Plugins page and easily configurable from the settings.

Hey Sick,

It appears my one or two fake registrations per day… while annoying… seems to suggest I have the problem slightly more under control. Here is what I’m doing:

I have two separate Captcha plug-ins: the ubiquitous “WP-reCAPTCHA” and a separate basic math plug-in simply called “Captcha” from BestWebSoft (free). But the trick is NOT to use “digits” with the math captcha. Check the box to only use “words” (eg: “six + ___ = eight”). Most bots defeat numeric captcha’s easily.

I have the tougher (and more annoying) “reCaptcha” set to only display on the Registration page, while the easier math “Captcha” only appears for unregistered visitors posting comments.

This results in almost no spam posts (very rare) and, as I noted, about two fake registrations per day.

I also use a plug-in called “IP Blacklist Cloud” that proactively blocks known Spammers from accessing the site in the first place.

Clearly my solution isn’t perfect, but sounds like it would be a great improvement over what you’re enduring now.

Request: Please add a parameter for “runtime”. No FLV Players show the video length on the control-bar before the video starts. The addition of a simple parameter that allows you to specify how long a video is before it starts would make this plugin stand out from the rest.

I figured it out. Of the radio buttons under “Page or URL”, there is no default selection. After selecting “Page”, it worked fine.

Thx.

I’m not using a Secure socket (https://). Is that required?

I installed the plugin, activated it, then under Settings | Maintenance Mode, I check the box for “Enable Maintenance Mode?”, told it to redirect to my “About Us” page, clicked “Save Options”, log out, visit my domain, and the site comes up just fine. ??

Am I doing something wrong?

How do you call “pageofposts.php” without altering core files?

If I modify any WP PHP file by hand, if that file is altered in the next update, I would have to edit the page all over again.

“Child Themes” sound interesting, but once again, sounds like far more work than I’m prepared to do at this time (I’m considering a Theme overhaul in January and might tackle comprehensive Theme modifications/additions at that time.

I’ll look into “Query Wrangler”. Hopefully, the kind of functionality I’m looking for will be built into WP 4.0.

Ah, back to the hand-recoding of WP.

As I noted, I was hoping for a simpler solution (and one that I might not have to redo after every update.)

Waitaminute. What’s “Page of Posts”? I thought that was a plugin, but I was thinking “Blog-in-a-Blog”.

I’m finding no such plugin. How are you creating this “Page of posts”?

Since I am unfamiliar with the “Page of Posts” plugin, it may have features I couldn’t glean from its description.

I was under the impression that when I type a new Post and assign categories to it, it appears on my Main Page by Default and a copy is redisplayed on your “Page of Posts” page. I wouldn’t want that. But you’re saying that specific categories defined under PoP will suppress Posts from appearing on both pages at once. That would be a step in the right direction.

Separate Comment fields are also good news (and crucial).

Not sure about the “category-specific RSS feed”. Is that part of PoP? I have not seen that feature under the standard WP interface.

If all this works, it sounds like a do-able solution.

“Page of Posts” simply filters Posts (already) displayed on your main page. You still have just one Comment field for all, and Subscribers are not notified when new Posts are added.

Esmi,

You DO know I’m talking about a POST page when I say “one home page”?

Not sure what good a “static” page does to do what I’m asking.

Displaying the Items (entries) on the page isn’t anything different than a filtered list with just one Comment field for all.

Unless a suggested “solution” produces a page similar to the standard “Posts” page, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know (or helps).

That sounds a bit clunky (“archiving” with Comments on a separate page) and confusing.

While I don’t actually have a “PC Review” site like my example, I visit such sites frequently. They’ll review the latest Video Card or the latest Hard Drive and allow visitors to Comment (typically their own experiences with that device). Just like on a standard WP Home Page, they might blog about a new device every week. You can scroll down to read past reviews and comment on them.

But when you can only have ONE homepage, you would have to mix hard drives, with video cards, with CPU’s to maintain that format. It would be great to have separate pages just for “Monitors” or just for “hard drives”, etc.

In my own case, I run a Political blog, but would like separate pages for non-political topics, or dedicated pages for specific issues (without requiring visitors to “filter” contents by Category (I already do that).

I saw Toolbox, but it appears to be a 2 column theme and I’m currently configured for a three column theme. Not sure what’s required to reconfigure it, but it would already be significant trouble just to recreate my Theme using my existing Template. I have neither the Need nor Desire to put in any more work than I have to at this point.

Updating my Theme just isn’t on my radar right now.

There’s nothing “crucial” not available to my Theme to justify putting all the work necessary to recreating it using a newer theme.

I need a good “three column” Theme as the basis for a new one.