I finally took the plunge and upgraded the server blog software to Movable Type 3.17 today.
It was a fairly substantial upgrade, requiring a lot of template and style sheet editing, as well as the copying of files hither and thither, but I think I’ve got everything more or less covered now. If you see anything strange on the site in the next couple of days, please report it to me.
My own homebrew methods of dealing with comment spam in Movable Type 2.x had been starting to try my patience, so I’d finally got around to taking a long-postponed look at the MT-Blacklist plug-in during the last couple of days. The upgrade to MT 3.17 allows one to use a much more powerful version of MT-Blacklist than the one available for 2.x, so I have now installed and configured that. It remains to be seen how much more effective this proves than my own hacks, but the interface is certainly very nice and I like the fact that it automatically updates itself with the latest list of spam domains from the Comment Spam Clearing House.
I really didn’t like MT-Blacklist for the older versions because it became incredibly slow on my tiny busy server when the spam list kept growing. I’m running spamlookup now, and tend to refer to it as being ‘the shit’. Mainly because it is.
Hey Onno,
Thanks for the tip. In reading about MT-Blacklist, I saw SpamLookup mentioned a couple of times.
You’ve convinced me to go and check it out.
On an entirely separate matter, I notice your domain is registered as being physically situated on the Gyroscoopweg 90 in Amsterdam. That happens to be the address of @Home Benelux, where I used to work. Do you work there?
Yep. I mainly use that address cause I don’t want to get spammed (by mail or phone). I’ll send you an email with some more info…