06.16.07
What a difference! Spam update
After I wrote that last spam rant announcing I had changed the settings to requiring registration, I was disappointed to see that there was still spam coming in. Early today I went to WordPress.org looking for a spam plugin. The plugin I decided on instituted a 30 second delay before allowing users to compose a comment, and allowed for custom comments by the blogger about how to use the system. Apparently spambots find it difficult to work with the delay, while real people would spend that much time reading my message to them anyway. It looked good to me, but I was working on something and didn’t get to it right away. Alas, when I went back, I was unable to find the same search page.
I did, however, find instructions for editing your .htaccess file to prevent spambots that do not give browser referrers, which is apparently all of them. I installed this and went to empty out the Akismet bin, only to find there were only 9 spams there. Amazing! A thing of wonder!
If you have trouble adding comments to the blog (they won’t show up right away, but I should be able to approve genuine blog comments by registered users within a day or so), or if registration doesn’t work, go to my main page and leave a message with my CyberTwin bot. She’s kind of inane at times, but I always see conversations between her and anyone who chats with her. They’ve improved the programming system for MyCyberTwins, but it’s a slow process. Bear with us.
Speaking of which, if you’ve got a website, you may be able to use a MyCyberTwin, too. It’s easy to set one up. But teaching them to respond as you would can be very time-consuming. They’ve improved it, so now you can edit the questions you might expect to be asked. Check my cybertwin out on my main page and see what you think.
Update to say that I’m still getting a certain type of spam. Clearly this bot is not registering and logging in. As near as I can see, bots must have access to the function of comments posting without going through the form. I have blogs that have comments completely turned off, yet they still receive comment spam. Time to learn php.
