I suppose everyone who blogs or own any kind of website likes to think their site is popular. We may tend to imagine millions in the blogosphere on the edge of their seats waiting for our next post. Such is rarely the case. I am sure that there are many bloggers that are overwhelmed with responses from reader and have pages of comments on every post. That is not true in my case. And, most likely, it is not true in your case either.

In fact, when I first started blogging, I was ecstatic over any comment—good or bad. I would stop everything to moderate that comment that just came in. Someone was reading my stuff and they took the time to comment. Hurray for me!

Then suddenly comments came in by the droves. Everyone liked my site—or so they said. Upon closer inspection, these commenters, who had all sorts of praises for me, were including links to sites that I’d rather not listed on my site—or anywhere for that matter. It didn’t take long to figure out that all of those “I loved your site” comments were just automated comment spam, playing on my desire to be popular on the Web.

Since I didn’t want to completely disable comments, I turned to the Akismet plugin for WordPress. So far, it has caught 1,153 spam comments, and I have had no false positives—yet. It is a great plugin and free for personal use.

Whether you use this plugin or some other method of catching comment spam, make sure you are diligent in reading comments that you allow and making sure any links are acceptable. Also, think twice before you start a comment with “Cool site” or some other generic phrase. If you like my site—tell me why. If you don’t—tell me why.

So, is anyone out there? Quick, I am waiting to moderate.

I have been getting these letters for years—you know, the one that says your domain name is about to expire so renew now or risk being forever lost in cyberspace, blah, blah, blah. I’ll admint they almost got me the first time, but now anything with Domain Registry of America goes straight to the trash, or gets shredded into a thousand pieces, or gets burned—you get the picture.

I am used to it so I don’t give it much thought, but when I got one today I realized how many people I know get these these, too. And, being personalized, with a lot of your domain information on there, it is easy to think it is legit and pay up and be done with it.

Don’t.

Not only are they dubious at best, but they are one of the more expensive registrars. They mention being cheaper, but they base that on information that is way out of date—back when Network Solutions had a monopoly. In Web-time that is ancient history.

Even if they were the low-cost leader, I still wouldn’t think of transferring to them. If they use scam-like tactics to get your business, there is no telling what they will do once they have control of your domain and everything associated with it like your website and email.

If you want more information about this particular scam, Google for “Domain Registry of America Scam” and read until your heart’s content. If you want, check out the official word from the Federal Trade Commission.