Blogger's New Commenting System Catches Spam For You

If your garden blog has been hit by spam you probably resorted to locking down your comments feature to only users with a Google ID or adding comment moderation. But there's good new on the comment front. Blogger is introducing a new spam filtering system. They're integrating  Gmail's spam filtering is a sign of easier comment moderation to come.

What's new? A spam filtering tab that catches spam comments and allows you to delete them from your dashboard or mark them "not spam" if they were accidentally labeled spam by the filter. These comments that the filter catches as spam are not visible to readers.


There's also a new comments "inbox" where you can moderate your comments from. Here you can mark your comments as spam or delete them or "remove content." What remove content does is allow you to remove the text.


These updates to how we manage comments will make managing our garden blogs on Blogger a bit easier and allow us to remove the hurdles we put up to block spammers. The new comments system on Blogger is being rolled out and it may take a while before these new features show up for all bloggers. Hopefully the next improvement to the commenting system on Blogger is threaded comments.

You can read more here. 

How To Remove a Label From Your Blogger Blog

Are you the kind of garden blogger that creates posts with lots of labels and then regret it? The Blogger team created this screenr video to show you how to remove labels from your Blogger blog.

Upload Your Own Photo As Your Blog's Background

On Blogger's Facebook Page it was announced that you can now upload your own image as your blog's background if you are using the new template designer. While the new template designer has a lot of great stock images you can choose to use as your background, but this new option is a good step in allowing us to customize our blogs and help them stand out from the rest. To use this new feature you have to log into draft.blogger.com.  Similarly, you can also use your own photography to customize your Google homepage.

New Version of AdSense for Search

Do you use an AdSense search box on your garden blog?

The old version of AdSense for search is being retired. How do you know if you're using the old version of AdSense for search? The logo for the older version reads "Powered by Google" and the new version reads "Google Custom Search."

The official AdSense blog gives the following directions for upgrading to the new version:

1Visit your "AdSense Setup" tab and select "AdSense for Search."
2Select the sites you'd like your users to be able to search across.
3Customize the look and feel of your search engine results.
4Update the code on your website.

Make sure you upgrade to the new version before they make the switch so you don't lose any funds.

Katie Calls it Quits

Since recuperating from her health battle this year Katie has discovered that Garden Punk(s) no longer represents her current life and has decided to cease blogging. Although, not without teasing us that the "new" Katie may come back with a blog at some point. We'll miss ya, old Katie. Maybe new Katie will discover she likes to garden too.

Thanks for the fish and the chance to use a new label.

July is Nasty Hot For the SeedGROW Project

A lot of the garden bloggers participating in the seed GROW project are experiencing really hot weather that isn't conducive to happy nasturtium growing. Fortunately, most of the gardeners finally have blooms to show off. Allow me to highlight a few of posts. The 6X8 Garden has the largest nasturtium leaf you'll ever see, Erin is also growing the reddest 'Spitfire' blooms of us all. Most of us seem to have blooms that are more orange than anything. Kylee, at Our Little Acre got a yellow nasturtium in the mix. Jenn at Jenn's Cooking Garden went out into her garden at night to see how the blooms looked in the dark.The Mini Gardener discovered that even though nasturtiums are suppose to hate being transplanted hers didn't seem to mind. Abbie at K-Town Homestead has a pretty thoughtful post on her nasturtiums and growing flowering plants in a potager garden in general. It is interesting to note that Abbie is my neighbor (not literally-miles apart. We live in the same part of Chicago where the streets begin with the letter K.) and her nasturtiums seem to be doing a lot better than mine. Although, I suspect I've had more blooms so far. Need something to do with your nasturtiums? Xan over at Mahlzeit provides us a scrumptious recipe for Nasturtium Dolma. I don't know what Dolma is but it looks tastier than it sounds.

Here is the complete list of seed GROW posts that have been post on the blog or I've come across. If I missed yours please let me know and if you're late, we'll still accept the link to your post.

The Write Gardener~ First Things First.
My Northern Garden~Pretty in Pots.
Gardenfaerie~ Keepin' on Keepin' On.
Miller Time~GROW Project: July Update.
Happy Hobby Habbit~ Grow Project, Post 5.
Life on The Balcony~ A Tale of Two Nasturtiums.
The Garden of Live Flowers~Irrational Exuberance . 
In The Garden Online~ July Seed GROW: A Flaw in My Plans. 
Our Little Acre~Seed GROW Project: July Update.
The 6X8 Garden~GROW-July Update.
Cheesehead Gardening~Seed GROW Project July Update.
True Epicure~ Hot.
Mahlzeit~ Nasturtiums are not just for salads.
The Home Garden~ Grow Project Hangin' in There.
Read Between the Limes~ July Seed GROW Project.
Garden Mom29~ Month of Extremes.
Garden Girl~ Nasties on the Move.
The Indoor Garden(er)~ Seed GROW project #4.
K-Town Homestead~ Flowers in Vegetable Garden.
Brown Thumb Mama~ Seed GROW Project: Baking in the Sun.
Jenn's Cooking Garden~ Getting your Nasties on at night! A nighttime look at the "spitfire"
Get in the Garden~  Seed GROW Project: Spitfire-works in July.
Gardening in my Rubber Boots~ Maybe Nasturtiums Like Torrential Rains.
The Mini Garden Guru~ SeedGROW Project #3-Planted and Blooming.
Really Rose~ My Spitfires 
MrBrownThumb~ Will be combing July's post with August because he's the organizer and can do that.

"I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for   the GROW  project. Thanks, to Renee's Garden for the seeds."
 
UPDATE: Seed GROW participants: There's a book review offer available to you here.

Blogger Introduces "Blogger Stats"

Over in Blogger's Blogger in Draft blog they just posted an announcement about a new native stats feature for Blogger. I already use Google Analytics and you may already use something similar to see where traffic for your garden blog is coming from, but the new feature from Blogger looks pretty neat. The stats are almost in real time and they're easier to understand and use than Google Analytics for those who don't need so much information.

You can check out your Blogger blog's features by logging into Blogger in Draft and clicking on the "stats" tab.  You get a general overview of your stats, statistics on page views being generated by individual posts, traffic sources, and statistics on where your audience is located and what kind of browsers and Operating system they're using.