The site is going through some wonkiness. I’m working with my hosting company to figure out just what’s causing the problem. If anyone happens to know what’s triggered in line 1954 of admin-functions.php of a WordPress install, please let me know. That’s what’s sucking up huge amounts of memory on the servers and ruining my Monday.

When the no_follow tag was first introduced to blogging platforms, I could not possibly have been happier. Then again, I was getting slammed with over 6,000 spam comments per day. Times — and spam-filtering software — have changed.

I’m now trying an experiment on EV that I’ve been using at my other, more personal blog for a bit now. I’m disabling the no_follow tag.

What does that mean for you?

It means that if you comment here, you’ll get a link back to your blog. A link that will be counted on the blogosphere ecosystem, on Technorati, on Google and umpteen other sites tracking such things. I figure it’s a case mutual happy hissing, or something like that.

I do, however, reserve the right to remove the do_follow tags if the amount of comment spam starts wearing out my chubby little fingers. Until then, however, consider it as just another reason to dive into the Snake Pit. More’s the merrier, as those who’ve not yet been bit like to say.

Does anyone remember the “Dear VK” columns from here and at WizBang? I wound up backing out of the weekly column due to lack of time. (I’d just started home-schooling and needed to focus on that.)

Well, Venomites, I’m thinking of resurrecting the “Dear VK” series, but in a different format: a radio talk-show. That’s right: Vocal Venom… or something along those lines.

What do you think? Would you be interested in hearing and calling in toll-free to a 15-minute weekly Electric Venom radio show that would also be available via Podcast and streaming audio here?

The “Asides” are starting to tick me off. They refuse to play nice with recent WP upgrades. Expect to see them ditched shortly.

Update: They’re here, but not here. “Asides” are now simply main entries.

Does anyone know how to easily create a reciprocal blogroll using actual blog names, rather than merely URLs (as Blogrolling.com does? I don’t relish the thought of manually entering all those links.

In addition to blogging here, Anwyn blogs here, too. As for me, although I do most of my blogging at EV, I also blog at this site now and then. There’s some good stuff at both of those other places — not that too many folks seem to be paying attention.

So I’m looking for a nice little WordPress plug-in that will collect the RSS headlines from entries at our other sites and post those headlines in the sidebar. No excerpts or summaries: just hyperlinked headlines that will let EV readers know when we’ve written something at one of our other blogs.

Can anyone recommend such a plug-in? Please note: I’m only asking for recommendations of plug-ins you’ve successfully installed yourself, because I tried a handful of them over the weekend and did not find a single one that actually accomplished what I want. I broke the blog four separate times and, now that my blood pressure has recovered, I’m not in the mood to break it again.

Any recommendations? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Anyone???

As any blogger will tell you, it’s more fun to blog when readers leave comments. It’s rewarding, and it lets us know we’re not just writing in a vacuum (even when our writing sucks).

As any blog reader will tell you, it’s difficult to remember which blogs one has left comments on recently, much less on which particular entry.

Sure, some blogs — like mine — offer that handy “Subscribe to Comments” feature, but many do not. Even then, I seldom feel comfortable leaving my true email address (I usually leave mine with @REMOVETHISelectricvenom.com at the end) due to spam. I suppose I could bookmark specific entries or perhaps add the entry’s RSS feed to my reader… but that sure seems like a lot of work.

Enter Co.mments.com, a handy site that allows me to bookmark entries upon which I’ve commented and track them…all on ONE page! It’s revolutionized the way I read blogs since I can now not only leave comments but participate in actual discussions. You’ll find Co.mments has a bookmark for just about every browser, including Opera (most social networking sights don’t provide Opera-friendly bookmarks).

You’ll also find that Co.mments is one of the bookmark icons now featured beneath every entry on EV…in case you want to share the Venom with the rest of the world.