Remember sometime back when I posted about why I had chosen to upgrade to CommentLuv Premium, then the amazing WordPress plugin was on sale for a limited time before it’s official launcg date, well, it’s now back on SALE!

ON SALE NOW AT A SPECIAL SALE PRICE! - Bonuses and low price until 30th Nov

CommentLuv Premium has become extremely popular since it’s original release and it’s beta testers and new owners of the MUST HAVE PLUGIN have loved it so much they just can’t help shouting about it to their fellow blogging friends.

Boosting Comments And Social Networing With CommentLuv Premium

Those that have CommentLuv Premium have noticed an increase in comments as well as some of the sharing of their blog posts since using the plugin, I myself have noticed an amazing increase, which is what we all want for our blogs.

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Sometimes we would all like to earn a little more from our blogs and if you are already an affiliate with Amazon then having links in your blog to products can help earn you a little bit on the side.

Recently I came across a plugin for WordPress called WordPress Amazon Associate, so I decided to test it on the Slappy Bear blog to see how it works and if it ran ok.

Installing the plugin was easy I used the search option in the section in the plugins to add new plugins and searched for “Amazon” and it was the first in the list of plugins available, version 1.6.0 at the time of writing this post.

Before I continue, a note to remember, is that you need a Amazon Web Services access key to use the plugin correctly, but don’t worry these are free and you can get one via the plugins settings.

So once you have installed the plugin you need to configure it.

This really straight forward, it’s a simple case of adding your Amazon associate name to the settings page, here you can add different ones for different countries, so the potential of earning is even better

Currently you can add associate IDs for: United States, Canada, China, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. You can also set which you prefer as a default. A plus to this is you can set up Geo-Location to help with getting the correct ID for the location that your potential sale is going to be coming from.

You will also need to add your Amazon Web Services API key, which is free so you can grab one of these from the settings if you haven’t got one.

Adding Amazon product to your blog posts

Now this really couldn’t be easier, when you are writing your blog post you will find a button with the Amazon logo on it, when your click this you will have several options such as simple links to products and widgets: Carousel, MP3 Clips, Your Favourites, Omakase, Product Cloud and a search widget. All easily added by a drop down menu on your editors bar.

For instance I used this very plugin for adding a Carousel to the Stargate Universe post, very much like this one:

As you can see it’s makes a nice option on the Stargate post for those after the DVDs, but you can set it up for anything you like and adjust the sizes to your requirements.

Overall verdict

I do like the WordPress Amazon Associate plugin, it’s easy to use and it’s ability to update the product to the country that the reader is visiting from is a really nice touch, overall, if you are looking for a good Amazon option for your blog then I would recommend this to you.

For it’s ease of use and simplicity, I’ll have to give it 9/10.

Image via Wikipedia

One of the things that can really get on your nerves when your blog gets more and more popular is the incessant amount of spam that keeps landing in your WordPress comments.

Ok so you may have Akismet running in your list of [intlink id="tips-bloggers-commentators" type="post"]Wordpress Plugins[/intlink], but to be honest it’s just not good enough and as mentioned by Gail at @GrowMap, Akismet can be a culprit of the dreaded white page of death on WordPress. So how about adding something in your WordPress Plugins that can really help.

Now thanks to Andy Bailey from CommentLuv there is a brilliant WordPress Plugin that can combat the dreaded Spam.

The GrowMap Anti-SpamBot Plugin is such a simple but very effective deterrent to the pesky bot spam that you get with a WordPress blog.

Why Use the GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin?

1. No false positives – your favorite commentators and new readers WILL be able to easily comment in your blog.
2. Blocks spam that Akismet was letting through. We are getting ZERO bot spam. Only those commenting manually who check the “I am not a spammer box” can leave comments.
3. Easier for commentators than using a Captcha or math plugin – never a “wrong” answer that isn’t wrong or a problem with cookies!

Why Not Just Use Akismet?

1. Large numbers of bloggers and regular commentators who never spam have been flagged by Akismet as spammers.
2. Any commentator who has been flagged as a spammer is treated rudely by your blog. They never see the message your comment is being moderated so they have no way of knowing what happened to their comment.
3. If you have a particular box checked in the Akismet configuration, comments left for real people who have been flagged incorrectly as commentators in posts more than 30 days old are immediately deleted and they see a blank white page. See how to turn off Akismet Comment deletion.

Read the many other posts and hundreds of comments related to problems with Akismet.

I’ve only recently started using the plugin and my SPAM has been reduced dramatically, so in my point of view it’s working like a dream, but don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself. Download the Growmap Anti-Spambot plugin on WordPress or via your Admin section under WordpPress Plugins in your WordPress installation

The mighty CommentLuv plugin has now been updated to version 2.80 and it seems faster than the previous versions and also has some nice new features included in the latest incarnation.

Which I will list for you in a moment, but first let me mention the nice surprise I had from Andy from CommentLuv via Twitter, I was reading in my Twitter time line that the new version was listed in the WordPress Plugins Directory, which I have to admit I don’t visit that often, I use the search from within WordPress for updates etc. But, after receiving this tweet from Andy, I had to check it out!

@BlazingMinds have you seen the new screenshots page for commentluv 2.80? http://bit.ly/bGUe44

June 5, 2010 8:40 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@CommentLuv

Andy Bailey

Imagine my surprise and excitement when I saw the second image on the page, were my red headed avatar is in pride of place in a screenshot of how the plugin is displayed.

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Now this is a controversial point for a lot of bloggers and readers of blogs, the dreaded word “Toolbar“, but hang on a minute let me finish, those of you who visit my blog often will know about the Wibiya Toolbar that runs at the bottom of Blazing Minds and I have personally found that it has helped reduce my bounce rates since it was installed.

I have tried to make it match the colours of the site and it fits nicely at the bottom the blog, not bothering anybody, but for those that look a little closer at it will notice that I have some handy little featuring running on it and recently I add some of the newer features that Wibiya have added to their site for Toolbar users to use.

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This is a guest post from Duncan who is an online marketing specialist and keen blogger representing a producer of natural beauty products and skin care products.

Blogging has come on a long way since its infancy. All bloggers could do back in the day was write a post, give it a title and maybe include a few hyperlinks if they were lucky. Nowadays however there are all sorts of widgets, plugins and extensions to help make the blogging experience a richer one, both for blog owners and their readers. WordPress has undoubtedly had a big part to play in this development, allowing the masses to develop the open source code and customise blogs to suit their needs. The other blogging platforms aren’t too far behind however and their progress is driven by the very human desire to make things better and more engaging.

One such development that many blog owners are taking advantage of these days is music players that they can either embed into their posts or individual pages. A couple of examples of these are the ‘Audio Player’ plugin for WordPress , which can actually be imbedded in any blog if you know a bit of code. Or Groove Shark, which is a customisable widget that will play music on your blog from their own diverse and extensive collection.

Using music on your site can really enhance a visitor’s experience. If you are trying to create an ambiance or have a clear theme on your blog, music can reinforce this. You might also like to showcase your own music on your site so you can get feedback or maybe catch the ear of someone in the industry? What you need to be careful of however is crossing the line between enhancing a users experience and putting them off by forcing your audio choices on them.

It is worth remembering that everyone has different tastes and may not like the music on your blog. Also, these days many people have their own music players open whilst browsing the net and don’t want their songs interrupted by what you think they want to listen to. With this is mind it is rarely a good idea to have music start playing automatically when people arrive on the site, but instead give them the option to turn it on if they so wish.

For example, on this site the music player is closed when people arrive

But if you want to you can open the music player by clicking on the arrow and the song starts to play. In this case it is Michael Jackson’s – Man In The Mirror…classic!

The key is, by all means give your visitors something to listen to when they visit your site and read your posts, but don’t try to force anything down their throats or assume they want to listen to your choice of tunes.

It seems that my blog has been quite hungry lately so I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning to help it speed up a tad and be less server-side hungry.

So I have deactivated a few [intlink id="52" type="category"]wordpress plugins[/intlink] these were the Cute Profiles, Wibiya Toolbar, WordPress.com Stats and the WP Greet Box, also I removed several “buttons” from the columns on the blog which were not really needed.

And as another work around for speeding up the blog I have installed WP Super Cache, since removing the plugins etc and adding Super Cache I have noticed a real speed difference, so hopefully this will help others viewing the site and speed up the process.

So lets see how it goes and maybe I will remove some other plugins in the next few weeks, depending on how everything is running, I may also consider changing the design of the blog to something a little quicker