Well, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of MovableType (3.14), installed MT-Blacklist, moved all the content to a NEW URL of http://blog.rac.me.uk and setup redirects from the old URL to this new one.
Now I’ve just got to do a redesign, get a few things working again (such as MT-RefSearch, RemoteCache and Amazon linkage) and then I’ll start blogging again.
Yeah me!
Due to the high level of spam comments I’ve been receiving recently, I’ve decided to close all comments on all previous entries.
I didn’t want to have to do this, but whenever I felt like blogging, I found I had to spend more and more time just cleaning up comment spam (20 contact lenses spam today alone). Easiest solution was just to close commenting. This will probably impact on the “popularity/usefulness” of a few entries (the Mystry of Time And Space game solutions and the Premium rate spam details), but, alas, there’s not much I can do at this point.
When I upgrade to MT 3 (which I still haven’t decided if I’ll do), I’ll probably install MT-Blacklist, but spammers have just taken all the fun out of blogging for me. Sorry.
I’ve just had 72 spam comments submitted to this blog, but running the following query through phpMyAdmin:
DELETE FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_email=’stro_se@hotmail.com’ OR comment_author=’viagra’ OR comment_ip=’66.36.249.149′;
and then putting an IP block on 66.36.249.* and adding various checks to /lib/MT/App/Comments.pm means that this idiot shouldn’t be able to easily spam me again.
Like practically everybody else in the blogsphere at the moment, I’m suffering quite a bit of comment spam: I had to block my first IP address yesterday – and now I’m blocking the following 7 IP addresses:
209.210.176.19
209.210.176.20
209.210.176.21
209.210.176.22
209.210.176.23
80.50.117.113
64.109.143.166
What sort of spam have I been getting? Well, 80.50.117.113 from “klaus” was a Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Xanax, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills spam and 64.109.143.166 from “Alex Dolbayov” was for “Great Site Folks! I have another [?] big t-ts site for you which is really the #1 big t-ts site” (and that’s after I’ve implemented Neil’s change the comment cgi-bin script filename patch type thing) and all the rest were over a variety of posts advertising the same pedo orientated porn site which a number of others have been unfortunately hit with.
Patches I’m going to try include URLs including zipcode are prohibited, Avoid Comment Spam, Comment Spam Quick Fix and I’m certainly going to try Jay Allen’s MT-BlackList once it’s released (I’ve in fact had an email from Kadyellebee of MT-Plugins to let me that it’ll be included in the MT Plugins Manager as soon as it’s released!)
(I may also include the Avoid Duplicate Comments and use some of the advice from Seven quick tips for a spam-free blog) and Comment Queue Script/MT Hack).
Expect a few minor things to change around here once it’s all been implemented (oh, I’ve also installed the Trickle thingy so I can schedule “future blog entries”).
Well, the redesign to Richy’s Random Ramblings is now up and active! What do you think?
Apart from the CSS and HTML changes (including making the content come before the HTML and getting the CSS and HTML to validate), I’ve also made a number of back end changes so the system should “slide” onto the new server without problems (there’s a change of directory structure from “Richy’s Personal Preference” to “Cpanel’s enforced Preference”: and it’s a lot easier for me to work around Cpanel then vice versa).
I’ve only updated the index template and the individual entry templates so far: all the category/archive ones are currently corrupted until I get around to them – but let me know if you spot any problems so I can address them now (leaving details of which browser you are using is helpful as well!).
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