Category: MT/WP

Comment Spam

Posted on by Dana

Movable Type allows users to determine whether or not they will allow anonymous comments. I prefer not to, which means you have to submit your e-mail address when you comment. On one occasion, a rather cowardly individual who posted my only negative comment ever provided a fake e-mail address, so I know there are ways around that. I wasn’t sure why he did it, though. Did he do it because he wanted to do the online equivalent of running up to someone on the schoolyard, smacking him/her, then running away? Or did he do it because he was afraid he’d get spam? I almost think spam is more dreaded than a tongue-lashing from yours truly. On the other hand, if he was who I think he was, I believe he’s web savvy enough to know that MT allows users to insert the following code in the comment post form to help prevent spam: 



However, since I can’t figure out whether it was fear of little ol’ me or spam, I decided I could at least take spam out of the equation.  I have fixed my comments so that while you still have to submit an e-mail, it will not be displayed, like so:




I have also added a feature that will protect my comments from spam.  From what I’ve read, it seems comment spam is on the rise.  That’s because Google rewards comment spammers by increasing their page rank.  As long as it works, you’re going to keep finding inducements to chase after nebulous investments in Nigeria, penis enlargement hocus pocus, and phentermine, phentermine, phentermine!  I personally have not had problems with comment spam yet, but that is probably due to the fact that until this week, I had the “noindex,nofollow” meta tag for robots in my header.  I really don’t care if a bunch of googlers wind up here by mistake and get disappointed when there’s not any really freaky naked pictures here, but I was miffed that I couldn’t get Technorati to work correctly.  I’m not positive this was the problem, but I think they were unable to spider my site.  On the other hand, even after I’ve removed the meta tags, they still haven’t listed my site on the profile, though they got The Pensieve.  I don’t know why I care, but it’s making me crazy.


Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  So I did have that safeguard in place, and you all didn’t even know it.  Now that I’ve removed that safeguard, I wanted you to know that not only will your e-mail address not be shown, but I have also placed a “noindex,nofollow” meta tag in my comments templates, so search engines shouldn’t try to index them.


All this talk about comment spam made me a little worried I’d start getting some, so I decided to be proactive.  I tried to install MT Blacklist, but I couldn’t get it figured out.  Flashbacks of installing MT threatened to overtake me, so I tried Junkeater instead.  Not only do they filter my comments before they are posted, but they also provided a handy little java script whereby posters will need to provide the code shown in the little box to prove they’re real people and not spambots.  


I hope all this extra security encourages you all to feel safer about leaving comments here.  Mainly I’m just kind of becoming a web geek who likes new toys, though.


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Done!

								

					Posted on  by Dana				

							


			

				
I appear to have successfully installed Movable Type.  It really took a lot of patience.  The thing that really bothers me is that my particular server does not appear to allow site administrators to upload folders, only files.  Even by ftp.  I tried.  So I had to manually create each and every folder and directory needed by Movable Type.  Then I kept getting all these errors because of case-sensitivity issues.  Note I typed in the name of each folder and directory EXACTLY as it appeared in the files I downloaded to my computer.  I was very careful to do this.  I found the fact that the files were misnamed by Movable Type very irritating and frustrating.  The directions were also not very specific.  I was putting files in the wrong directory, because the instructions seemed to indicate that only .cgi files went into the cgi-bin.  I understand why the files all need to be in the cgi-bin in order to work, but I think the instructions could have been clearer on that point.  I am seeing lots of questions on their forums regarding installation errors, and I feel that giving clearer instructions could eliminate the bulk of the problems.


In other news, I hadn’t heard anything from the schools I had interviewed with, so I bit the bullet and e-mailed my contacts.  I was thrilled to receive this e-mail:


I, too, enjoyed our conversation at the job fair.  I am waiting for the signal from my principal regarding the scheduling of the next round of interviews.  At this point, my principal is working on filling positions in another department and he is not ready to move in the direction of language arts.  I hope to be in touch in the next few weeks.  Thank you for so graciously sharing the product of your research and curriculum design efforts!  I will treasure the Beowulf unit plan!  It is most impressive.  In a conversation with my principal later that afternoon, he indicated that he was also impressed!


That lifted my spirits a bit!  I had e-mailed her a link to the Beowulf Teacher’s Guide I wrote, and that is what she was referring to.  I needed that little pick-me-up.  I had an OCD morning.  I couldn’t find anything I was looking for.


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					Posted on  by Dana				

							


			

				
Installing  Movable Type has to be the most labor-intensive thing I’ve ever tried to do on the computer.  I keep getting an error when I try to load mt-load.cgi, so I posted my query to their forum, and maybe I can figure out what I am doing wrong.  I am embarrassed by my clear lack of geekitude.  I was sitting here, thinking I could install the thing all by myself with no help.  After all, I know… stuff.  You know.  Quit laughing.  Anyway, I did what the instructions said, but my head hurt.  I don’t think I understand computerese as well as I thought I did.  No wonder they offer paid installations.  Hell, why not offer the software for free when it takes a computer geek of the first level to be able to install it?  They can make all the money they need through installations.


I finished  All He Ever Wanted yesterday.  I enjoyed the book very much, and I was reminded of Doris Lessing’s short story “To Room Nineteen” and Michael Cunningham’s  The Hours.  I haven’t read  A Room of One’s Own or  Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (I guess I must do that soon!) or even  A Doll’s House (actually, I may have read that one…), but I gather from research that all are similar in theme.  I wonder that the issue of having a place, separate from home and family, is something that comes up so much in feminist literature, even today.  But back to All He Ever Wanted.  As a person with OCD, I empathize with the narrator, even when he does extraordinarily awful things.  I know all too well how he feels.  I see bits of my husband in both the narrator and Etna.  I see bits of me in the narrator, too.  I wonder… is this need to get away a common function of unhappy or loveless marriages?  I was getting to the point of feeling this way in my first marriage, but I haven’t felt that way about my current marriage, not even with our recent problems.  Sure, sometimes when we fight I have an urge to flee, but it isn’t this dull, persistent ache to be elsewhere, to escape.  It’s a feeling of gradually suffocating or being strangled.  “To Room Nineteen” resonated strongly with me, even though I read it in a sophomore-level British Lit. course when I was so young I couldn’t have possibly related to in on the level I might today.  The book reminded me too of A.S. Byatt’s  Possession in that they seemed to be written in a similar manner.  I couldn’t really put my finger on exactly what it was.


So I’ve moved on to  The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.  Very good so far.  The Boleyns are such a disgusting lot — all their scheming and social climbing phoniness.  I think, though, the one thing that is bothering me about this book, despite the fact that it is otherwise very good, is that the characters speak in a rather modern manner.  It doesn’t sound “period” to me.  Here I’m talking like an  SCAdian.  It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the main complaint reenactors and historians have with the novel.


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