This entry doesn’t have much to do with food or cooking, I’m afraid.

I’ve become somewhat frustrated with the platform that this blog runs on. I’m using MovableType, which I have always loved, but which is becoming increasingly frustrating for a few reasons.

Most of my other blogs (Madison Dining Online, Cooking Out Of The Box, etc) have been implemented using the latest versions of Wordpress.

I have become extremely impressed with the growth of Wordpress within just the last year or so. MovableType seems to have come to a screeching halt for the average user, while Wordpress is forging forward, mainly by the efforts of the community that uses it. The plugins are terrific, and the flexibility is really impressive.

But. I have hundreds of entries on Cuisine Capers, with hundreds of photos. In addition to that, Google LOVES this blog. Migrating to Wordpress will be a very painful process, and it will set me back a great deal in terms of search engines, etc.

Having said that, I now get over 2000 spam messages a day. Yes, that is right. In a mere 24 hours my filters catch anywhere between 2000 and 3000 messages. This has made the commenting, trackback and interaction portions of Cuisine Capers an impossible goal. All comments are getting caught in the filters, and it is impossible to visually inspect the comments to find the legitimate ones. So, they all get deleted. I’ve also had to turn of trackbacks. On top of that, when I get hit with pings and spam comments in rapid succession, it takes down the server that this blog is running on. That makes my host very, very unhappy.

So, do I live through the painful migration, and then spend months rebuilding search engine traffic to avoid the above situation?

Decisions, Decisions.

After weeks of frustration and beating my head against a brick wall, I’ve finally figured out that it was my blog roll that was breaking my Movable Type template.

So, it has been removed until I can figure out how to add it back in without breaking the entire blog!

I hate Spam. No, that isn’t a comment about the food product (or would that be alleged food product?). That is a statement against the reviled comment spam that almost anyone who has a blog deals with.

I have spent hours and hours deleting spam from this blog. In addition to that, my blacklist program was catching over 1,000 spam messages a day that it was NOT allowing through. It became an exercise in futility. So much so that I’ve actually dreaded dealing with this blog in general.

The solution was to upgrade to the latest version of MovableType. But that in an of itself was a dreaded thought. I put it off and put it off.

So yesterday I bit the bullet and did the upgrade. I had two pleasant surprises:

1. MovableType has changed their pricing model so that software for personal blogs is once again free. Cool! Though I admit, I would have gladly paid the reasonable fee that they asked for the software. It’s really great stuff.

2. It was an incredibly smooth upgrade! It didn’t live up to the anticipated dread levels at all!

So now I have a blog that should be much easier to manage in terms of Spam. Maybe I won’t dread it as much, and maybe I can start writing about cuisine again!

Cuisine Capers Turns One

---

A little over a year ago I decided to create a food blog. The idea struck me out of the blue, for no apparent reason. I had set up many other blogs in the past, but I wanted one that I could use to concentrate on food and cooking.

I didn’t know at the time that there was a growing community of food bloggers out there. In fact, after I set the blog up, I dug around for a bit looking for similar sites that I could link to. I remember finding An Obsession With Food and thinking, “Wow, that is sooo cool!”.

So I set Cuisine Capers up and started writing about cooking adventures. I was pretty amazed as the food blogging community seemed to start to explode with new people, ideas and themes. I began to participate in events such as Is My Blog Burning and Wine Blogging Wednesday. The sense of community that is created by these events is pretty inspiring.

I was happy when I started averaging 25 visitors a day - Hey! People are reading my blog! And then, seemingly overnight that traffic doubled - then tripled - then grew and grew and grew. I’m amazed by the people who stop by each day. I just wish they’d comment more often and add a bit of interactivity to it all (hint, hint).

A few weeks ago a new logo was created for the site, and as I gather up the time, energy and nerve I’ll start a redesign. I have some other plans for the site in the future, which I am really looking forward to as well.

But in the meantime, I’ll just keep foodblogging away, with the help from my fellow Foodie Vic, who pops in now and then (but not nearly often enough - yet another hint!)

So, thanks to all who visit, and feel free to let us know what you think as you stop by.

Irene

I’m always amused when I start peeling back the cover of my blog and look behind the scenes. My sources of entertainment are from mainly two areas; the amount and type of comment spam that is stopped by my spam filter, and the search engine terms that are used to get to my site.

Let’s tackle the comment spam first, shall we? Here are a few facts:

• Today alone my spam filter has stopped 67 comments from going through - and it’s only 10:30 AM!
• On average, the filter stops about 170 comments a day
• Leading the charge in spam comment terms: “texas holdem”, “viagra”, “lolita”, “poker”, “xenical”, and “meridia”
• That bob@yahoo.com is one busy guy. I stop about 50 messages a day from him alone!

And now on to search engine terms.

• If you misspell words in your blog, you are not alone. It is amazing how many people find Cuisine Capers due to misspellings in the blog that they also misspell in their search attempts
• People seem genuinely interested in “Wisconsin Brandy Consumption”. Why, I know not
• For some odd reason, people seem to think that you need to cook purple cauliflower differently than regular ole cauliflower. “How to cook purple cauliflower” shows up several times daily
• People are keenly unaware of what a “caper” looks like, judging from the many that search for “pictures of capers”.
• Either I am the world’s leading authority on Zigeuner Schnitzel, or no one else writes about it on the web, because I get lots and lots of hits looking for it!
• There is great interest in the Roy’s Hawaiian Martini recipe. I refer to the martini, but I’ve never posted the recipe. Since I do have it, I should assist these desperate searchers and post it one day.
• People seem genuinely enthused with “The Bears Still Suck” polka. I can certainly understand that

Blogs are fun.

Now that I have your attention…

I was wandering around some food blogs the other day and took some time to more thoroughly read one of the more entertaining blogs on my list. The blogger had a special section that promoted advertising on the blog, and touted the thousands of hits a day the blog got.

Disgruntled, I wondered how on earth the blog had built up that traffic. Wow, thousands of hits a day???

Then I clicked on the site meter symbol in the corner to take a look at where the traffic was coming from. Ready for this?

It was coming from a segment of the thousands of people searching on the term Janet Jackson’s br**st.

Turns out that this blogger had made a humorous post about making a cupcake in the shape of Janet Jacksons br**st in honor of the now famed wardrobe malfunction at last year’s superbowl.

And no, I am not starring out the word br**st because I believe my fellow foodies are overly sensitive and can’t take seeing the word. I’m doing it so that the thousands of people searching for titillating views of non-foodlike items don’t find me through the search engines!

Search engines are funny. Right now the top search terms for hitting my blog are:

• zigeuner schnitzel
• johsonville bratwurst (note the mispelling - I goofed on an entry and mispelled the word. Turns out that a number of search engine searches do the same every day! Who knew.)
• Hawaiian martini
• how to cook purple cauliflower - I guess people think the color makes a difference in the cooking process
• Gray’s Papaya - thanks to my tubular meat obsessed partner in crime
• the bears still suck polka - probably strong interest in that term after last weeks football game…

…. and a lot more terms that amuse and entertain me!

I’ve hit a dinner road block. I can not, for the life of me, think of something exciting to make for dinner.

So I thought, hmmm, what to do… what to do…?

Then I said to myself, “Self, you have links to some of the most interesting, inventive food bloggers in the world! Why not scour their pages and come up with something for dinner tonight!”

And so I shall! I’ll let you all know what struck my fancy later!

Just a few random “Behind the Scenes” observations, after looking at site statistics:

• Is it just us, or does food blog visitor traffic slow waaaaay down on weekends? What? You mean people have a life on weekends? Huh.
• When Food Porn Watch is down, so is visitor traffic. So I guess that means that we owe Jarrett a very big thanks for his site!
• In the last 3 days alone, my nifty Moveable Type spam filter has stopped 162 (yes, that’s ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO) rude and crude spam comments from being posted. Geez.
• Search engines pick up the funniest things, and quickly, too! Here’s some of the top search terms that sent people to our site in the last three days:
  • Gray’s Papaya
  • Wisconsin Brandy Consumption
  • Pictures of capers
  • 7 Deadly Zins
  • Varsity Hotdog
  • Zigeuner Schnitzel
  • Tilapia
  • How to cook weisswurst
  • Purple cauliflower
  • Roy’s Martini
  • Butterscotch melon

And there ends today’s musings.