Menoploplop; Up Follow Further

I have gotten as far as eliminating about 70 posts from the archives and adjusting labels - those 70 were all the Menokakkul posts that were simply cut and paste images from Google files that are seen all over the place and to which I have no copyright neither was going to bother trawling through to attribute every single one of the eight or nine per post. They were just those visual gags that we all have shared at one point or another, only I made a weekly article of them for a while. They added nothing to this blog beyond filling a Wednesday for a couple of years.

Now the astute will note that 70 weeks does not a two-year period make. This is true! Not all Menokakkul posts were created equally; the remaining 34 did pertain to life here at Doses Central. Well most. So they remain. A few still are pure joke material, but of the sort that really did tickle my fancy and thus fit with the ethos. Which addresses a concern that Tigger and F had about my removing posts - "what about history knowing what made the YAMster laugh?" Truth is, most of those c&p images were not that hilarious but they filled a space... up until I began the musicalisms in January 2019. I hadn't anticipated that new meme becoming so popular - or at least a point of good debate - and it is only now that I finally got round to assigning that midweek posting its very own label. 

Now I need to go right back to the beginning and sort out any anomolous images (even some of my own do not show up now as various changes have been made to the software by Google), shut down comments on all posts prior to 2019 (an onerous, post by post task; this is one thing they could improve on! Wordpress offers the option to shutdown comments automatically after two weeks - without losing existing comments...sigh...) Why bother with that? Security. It helps to cut down on potential for spam.

SPAM!!! Now, I have written about this before on the Etherwobblies posts, but it bears repeating. Aitch needed help with this - and there was someone else (c'mon menohead, who was it???) who was struggling with video insertion. So here's some technobabble for you, made as simple as possible.

The more consistent you are with following through on reporting spam using the provided widget, the better the bots become at recognising invaders. On your dashboard, go to the comments main page. Hovering over the offending comment, you will see, on the right (my down-arrow) the option to remove the content of the comment (which would still leave the commenter's name on the post), spam it (which removes it from the post and places it in the spam folder), or delete permanently (removing the entire thing). 

Once spammed, you can find the comment in the relevant folder, which is in the drop down (my left arrow). There you might find that there are already items that have been spammed that you never knew about, because Google's system is actually pretty efficient! But that is why spammers are getting ever more clever with disguising themselves as genuine commenters - or at least they think they are. If, heaven knows it happens, you should be hit by a number of spam comments all at once (I once had a spate of over a hundred!), then you can select them by hitting the 'manage' button on the comments page - in turquoise at top right - which gives the option to select as many posts as necessary then hit the buttons up top for your action to apply to all. Keep at it people - spam away!!!

NB - Friday arvo and Mara has made me look again at the SETTINGS for the bloggy and something I had not picked up myself;;; that Google did actually create the possibility to cut off free commenting after a set time (of your choosing). Settings page, scroll down to comments, select 'sometimes moderation' and save, then select the time period (I set mine for 21 days) and all comments that come in after will be on moderation. Still means you have to deal with them by spamming if necessary, but this is some improvement at least.

Now videos. I use the tubular here for demo - but if using Vimeo its essentially the same. Go to the video's share button and on hitting it, a popout screen will appear with options. In YT you will see the Blogger logo - if you are not worried about sizing and are happy to use what it provides, you can hit this button and it will open a post editor page with the video already embedded for you. All you have to do is write your blurb and schedule or publish as you desire. 

If you wish to be a little more in control though, you can use the embed option and this is what I do all the time...

This last bit, as you see, needs to be done in HTML view. When you return to compose view, it will look greyed out, but when you preview the post you will see it as it will appear on publishing.

I know there are several of you reading here who are pretty deft with the tech - but it never harms to see how others do it! Importantly, though, I hope this does help those who have struggled.

Hooroo the noo.