Category: Net: Blogging

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”).

Firda from Wannabe girl was one of the blogs that inspired me to start my own – but now she needs YOUR support!

In the middle of the Blogathon (she was the only person I sponsored as well), her mother was taken ill and is currently in the Intensive Care Unit in their local hospital. However, due to Indonesia (where Firda lives) not having a national health service (like the UK’s own NHS: poor though it is), she has to find all the hospital bills herself – and at $300 a day (that’s £186) it’s quite expensive.

So, go and donate some money to her (via her friend’s PayPal account) – I’m sure it’ll be appreciated. I’ve done my little bit (practically clearing out all the contents of my PayPal account to her) – so why don’t you give a few dollars?

Woo! I’ve just hit the 1,000^th comment entry with:

July 28, 2003 12:37 AM: on Game: Grid Lock by Canguy

i’ve been scratching my head so long over level 40 i’m bleeding
Canguy

Ok, it’s not the most inspiring comment on the most up to date post – but it’s still the 1,000th comment (baring duplicates and spam: both of which I should have eradicated by now).

If all goes well, the following piece of code snippet:

<ol>
<MTComments firstn=”1000″ sort_order=”ascend”>
<li><span class=”comments-post”><$MTCommentDate$>: on <MTCommentEntry><a href=”<$MTEntryLink$>
“><$MTEntryTitle$></a></MTCommentEntry> by <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1” show_email=”0″$></span><br /><$MTCommentBody$></li>
</MTComments>
</ol>

should mean the full entry of this post should have all 1,000 comments listed. I was hoping to be able to have cut’n’pasted the list in: but, again, I’ve hit the “maximum post size” of MovableType. Drat…

Update: Nope, it didn’t work. It seems you can’t use the template tags in an entry. Oh well, you’ll just have to look through the blog to find the comments!

Many thanks everybody for all the comments and trackbacks – and keep them coming! They make blogging worth the while!