Update … Any gurus out there?

My post Rules or Artistic License appears at The Blood-Red Pencil today. Do writers have to follow the rules or can they take artistic license? Check out the post for my take on the question.

Here at A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye, I’m still tweaking. When I moved the blog, I ended up with more than 300 broken links. Some of them had probably been broken for awhile—they were external links in posts. However, I didn’t know they were broken until I added the Broken Link Checker plugin. All I had to do was tell Broken Link Checker to unlink, and the problem was solved—the text was saved but the link removed.

Other broken links were links to images in posts. The images seemed to be in the right place, and the links seemed to be right, but they just wouldn’t connect. So I uploaded most of the images again and deleted a few that I couldn’t readily find.

I’m still working on internal links in old posts. When I started the blog, I used the default WordPress permalink structure (date and post or page number). I later changed to date and title and had a plugin to redirect the permalinks; however, that plugin isn’t working here so I’m changing each link individually. I’m down to 42 broken links.

There are still a few glitches that I need to work out. I’ll appreciate any suggestions anyone can make.

• There seems to be a problem with the feed. When I used the FeedSmith plugin on the old theme, a loyal reader said she could no longer get my feed so I deactivated the plugin. I tried the FD Feedburner plugin when I moved the blog, and my Feedburner subscriber number jumped from fewer than 80 to nearly 150. However, it seemed that my feed was showing comments and not posts … so I’ve deactivated the plugin and am back down to 74 subscribers … but the feed seems to be working. If you are a subscriber, please let me know if the feed is working for you.
• Trackbacks are showing up in Recent Comments. All the repaired links are showing up as new trackbacks, so Recent Comments is full of old trackbacks instead of new comments. Does anyone know a way to exclude trackbacks?
• Gravatars disappeared from comments. I think this happened when I finally got Brian’s Threaded Comments working though I didn’t notice it immediately so it could have happened later.
• CommentLuv and Keyword Luv still aren’t working. I can’t figure out why … they just don’t work. Any ideas?

One thing can’t be fixed: I lost all my replies to a number of comments. I recently responded to new comments on a few old posts and was dismayed to find there were no comments from me to the dozen or more comments. It looks like the threaded comments disappeared so there may be other missing comments as well since some of my readers also replied in threaded comments. I hate to lose the conversation but am glad most of my readers comments are here.

Have you noticed any other glitches? Tell me about any problems you’re having here so I can resolve them—or at least try to.

My goal is to have the blog in tip-top shape before my blog book tour (October 27th – November 14th). I still have a couple of open dates if you’re interested in hosting me.

Comments and New Plugins

If you’ve made a comment here recently, you’ve probably noticed a couple of new plugins.

Live Comment Preview does exactly what the name implies – it gives a live preview as you type your comment. Most of us find it much easier to spot a mistake when a comment goes live than when we’re typing in the comment box. With Live Comment Preview, you can preview your comment as you type it.

But if you still make an error – and don’t we all from time to time? – there’s WP Ajax Edit Comments. This plugin allows the commenter to edit a comment for a designated amount of time. I’m using the default setting of 15 minutes, which is enough time to see the error as soon as it’s posted – when I see mine – and correct it right away.

If you moderate comments, the comment won’t be sent through moderation again. However, it will be sent through Akismet again. That precaution will prevent a spammer from leaving an innocuous comment, then changing it to spam after it’s moderated.

I wish every blog used these or similar plugins. I am embarrassed at the number of comments I’ve left all over the blogosphere with errors that I’ve caught … just after the comments went live, with no way to correct them. Errors in comments don’t reflect very well on me as a writer and editor, and I cringe every time I see a mistake I’ve made. I want to give my commenters the opportunity to catch their own errors.

As I state in my comment policy, I will correct typos in comments, but I prefer for my commenters to edit their own comments.

Thank you to each person who has posted a comment here, and special thanks to those who comment regularly. Blogging has become much more of a conversation than I expected when I started, and I love hearing from my readers. I’ve thought of adding a top commenters plugin, but my sidebar is already too crowded. Even if I don’t recognize commenters in a post or listing, I do respond to every comment, and I appreciate every one!

Updated 10/9/07: Commenter Misti Sandefur, reminded me of another comment plugin that I love. I’ve used Subscribe to Comments for a while, so it’s not new to me, but it’s an excellent plugin folks should know about. Maybe it’s new to some of you.

updated 10/9/07: Thanks to Mike Olbinski for helping me get Brian’s Threaded Comments working with my current theme.  this is a wonderful plugin that allows commenters to reply to specific comments.

[tags]comments, Live Comment Preview, WP Ajax Edit Comments, WordPress plugins, Subscribe to Comments[/tags]