KeywordLuv Plugin Is Gone
KeywordLuv is very useful plugin for your WordPress blog and for the longest time I have been using it to share link love to the commenters on my blog. I appreciate each and every one who took advantage of the feature and contributed to the content on my blog!
And yes, valid comments I consider a valuable content and love rewarding people for it! Link love is one of the easiest ways to reward.
But in my process of streamlining the blog I had to re-think a few features and many of you perhaps have noted that some of the features are gone completely from my blog – if you didn’t notice, than no need to worry 
While features are important I had to think about one thing: WordPress is a platform of CONSTANT CHANGES! One of the perhaps most frequently updates CMS systems that allows it to grow in popularity by providing latest features to the users and integrating what used to be third-party options.
I can only say Kudos to WordPress development team for that!
But it also places a burden on us – bloggers. If you become reliant on a specific feature on your blog provided by plugin – you better be sure that this plugin is well supported and will be compatible with upgrades. What is even more important – be sure those changes more or less comply with standard features and if you disable plugin – it will not break you blog or screw up the format.
And while I hate to single out anyone – great example of plugin that many were relying on – Popularity Contest and than support stopped at 2.3.*, probably because Alex got bored with it. I mean i wish I could make up better excuse but he has stated that he knew the problem and knew how to fix it (see his comments) to be compliant with latest version but we never seen that fix released. I know many work around solutions were provided by community, which proves its resilience but the core issue remains – support from developer stopped.
The issue is quite common in Open Source because code provided under GPL and is supported on Best Effort bases. Perhaps developer didn’t have time – I don’t know but what I do know: We as bloggers need to be smart about features integrated into our blogs and themes!
Sorry for the long story but I’m getting to the point.
KeywordLuv enables people provide Name is format “Name@Keywords Of Choice” and have the “Keywords Of Choice” part hyperlinked to the link of their choosing! Superb idea that shares link juice with all important chosen anchor text.
But here comes the problem, which is two fold:
- As a blog become popular more and more spammers come in and start abusing this feature by providing comments that do not contribute to conversation
- Current state of Spam Defending plugins is not 100% proof and no matter what combination I try with Akismet – I’m still left with too much moderation!
And not because plugins I use are innefective, quite the opposite! Automated Comment Spam is nearly non-existent on my blog but because Spammers Got more involved! Same issue noted by Mark Gnosh at Weblog Tools Collection is hitting me as well. I have just implemented Simple Spam Filter plugin which does a very good job in addition to Akismet in identifyign the spam and if identified – it presents re-Cuptcha option to the commenter!
And since I’m seeing ever increasing number of Comment Spam that passes ALL filters, re-Cuptcha and submitted using KeywordLuv options, in format “Spammer@Spam Keywords” that is linked to sites that sometiems go beyond offencive – I have made the decision:
KeywordLuv plugin had to go!
All previously submitted comments with links will still retain their juice passing features and provide you with benefits but:
No New Comments Will Be Approved if the commenter is Not Using Name but keywords!
I still provide the PR juice sharing using CommentLuv plugin and control DoFollow using options defined by Lucia Linky Love plugin. If this proves to be inconveniece to someone – I apologize but will not change my decision!
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
Alex,
It’s too bad that the Spammers ruin this feature for everybody else.
I can’t help but think that this creates a business opportunity for someone that comes up with a viable solution.
In reading the post and the comments I couldn’t help but think of an independent 3rd party service that would score commenters and their histories, much like credit scores are for lenders. Bloggers could then decide at what level a commenter would need to be at to be able to comment on a particular blog.
Newer blogs might have a more flexible policy with regard to blogging score and more established bloggers such as yourself might have a higher standard in order to allow commenting.
Just my two cents.
Retired Early in Ajijic, Mexico,
Joel Smith
Casa Preciosa, Ajijic, Mexico
I’m still pretty new to blogging, so I thought it sounded like a great idea. After all, that’s why I put up a blog is to get visitors. If the spammers get out of hand I guess I might reconsider, but by them maybe I’ll have a following. Good discussion in the comments.
Oldbuddys last blog post..Passive Advertising
On my main blog, I have over 50,000 spam messages, Do-follow and keywordluv bring plenty of them. But it doesn’t bother me. It isn’t that much of an effort to delete them. With Keywordluv I get 10-15 good meaningful comments a day on my that blog, without it, unless I am posting all the time I get very few, 1-2 a day. Your readership is much larger so you can afford to loss it, but I love all the new content that all these comments bring to my blog, My commenter’s do all the work of adding new content to my blog.
Simon,
I agree and I don’t consider myself as been able to “afford the loss”. I appreciate each and every comment that was done on this blog with good intentions. And I reply to almost all that expect a reply. It was a choice I simply had to make.
Twitter: volaer
says:
Just a question, what plugin do you use to have a “Reply” link in the comment section?
Vinces last blog post..Music Clinic In OLCM
It is functionality introduced with WordPress 2.7 and we have built it into theme starting with that version. Just download the blog installer, extract it and then upload new theme files to your blog using FTP and then in Settings-Discussion – enable threaded comments
Twitter: volaer
says:
Got it Alex!!! Thanks a lot…:) Shew… I am really learning many things from you. By the way, I am using now your custom tool browser. This is awesome. It has been a big help to me.:) Thanks again!!!
Vinces last blog post..Music Clinic In OLCM
To avoid the spammers it is important not to have this Plug-In. also it is good for you to have LuciaLinkyLove Plug-In as this will also serve the commentetors with the best it can.
Thanks.
It is something that is somewhere effective as it is the great way to get rid of spam comments.
I will definitely use this plug in for my blog too.
Thanks.
No anti-spam plugins work as good as manual moderation. By the way the measure you took to control spam is a right one. You can be glad about it.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Science and it’s quirks =-.
This is another great post on your blog!
I will check out this plug in on my blog in the future! Thanks for sharing all this useful informations!
.-= Benjamin Hübner´s last blog ..Bookmarking Services with dofollow tag! =-.
I guess I am not too sad about it. The only people you are affecting are people who won’t actually read your article – and who want them anyway?
.-= Paul´s last blog ..Foot injury ends Brady Quinn’s season =-.
I still see some blogs that welcome to write name@keyword and declare the comment system is keywordLuv enabled. I wonder if they are still using older version of wordpress or they coded the fix themselves?
.-= Suresh Khanal´s last blog ..Does your blog load too slow? =-.
I’m also commenting on blogs to get some backlinks to my site but i actually read the blogs and i try to give as good comment as i can. Then again there are the people who do the opposite, put a comments what are copied from above, put some spam comments like “great post man, got some good info” etc(was mentioned above as well i remember correctly).
At the moment we don’t have a blog installed on ohtallinn.com but when it will. I will for sure add keywodluv.
B.
why’d you delete my comment? This isn’t a keyword, it’s my NAME!
.-= DJ Dennis J´s last blog ..My Latest Wedding Disaster Aversion Story =-.
Sorry Dennis, must have got wiped out in from my spam folder by accident, get so many spams – sometimes hard to identify false positives
Well I do appreciate the reply nevertheless. I’ll go ahead and try to recreate what was in it again–
It’s a shame that you had to remove the KeywordLuv plugin, but you do seem to be on to some other methods for rewarding viewers such as the ‘three approved comments’ rule. Is that working out for you? Have you found any faults with the new system?
.-= DJ Dennis J´s last blog ..My RSS feed seems corrupted? =-.
I used to have KeywordLuv in one of my blogs , but it got so heavily spammed that I had to remove it.
One of the most irritating things I find is to delete spam comments. How many comments in your blog are spam?
Are you using any other plugin to makes deleting spam comments easier?
Jason.
My recent post Scarecrow Sprinklers Review
I haven't taken the plunge to install keywordluv – you make a good point about the spam but it would be nice to have more quality comments as well – I guess I'm still on the fence. I do love CommentLuv though. You mentioned you were using Lucia's Link Love too, as am I, but as of WP 3 I get errors when posting when I have Lucia's enabled – is there a good alternative to that plugin to enable dofollow that anyone is aware of?
Someone else asked as well – what is the plugin you use to subscribe to replies? That's just what I've been looking for as well – I wish all blogs had that feature as my inbox gets a bit busy from blogs that get a 100 comments a post and all I want to see are direct replies to my comments.
My recent post EarthBox VS Square Foot Gardening – And the Winner Is