Even after having updated all five of my blogs’ WordPress installations to version 2.3.2, I was still getting comment spam sent to me, asking me to moderate. While I’m thankful that it was held for moderation, it’s irritating to have to log into WordPress to mark the items as spam (which I’m convinced does nothing at all) and then delete them from my inbox. So I decided to add a few layers of protection to my WordPress installations, two of them being transparent, and one additional layer for proving the end-user to be a real person.

I added two behind-the-scenes layers of protection — Bad Behavior and Akismet — and have to say that they were VERY easy to install. Simply upload the files into your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and then activate them in WordPress. That’s it.

Bad Behavior analyzes the HTTP request information to determine the origin and nature of the request (and process accordingly) whereas Akismet is a web service API that tests comments, trackbacks and pingbacks against their API. Apparently it runs hundreds of tests against the post/request to test for spam. We’ll see how effective these two are.

And because three is not only a holy number, but heck it’s one extra layer of protection [mom always said dress in layers] I added a third layer. I added Pete’s Custom Anti-Spam Image plug-in, which allows me to set up a custom word image that my end-users have to type in, verifying that they are indeed a human being. Customizing the plug-in isn’t terribly difficult; simply do the following:

1. Look for the file custom_anti_spam.php in the folder /wp-content/plugins/peters-custom-anti-spam-image/. You can do one of two things: modify in WordPress or edit the file in a text editor and upload the modified file. If you want to modify the file in WordPress, change the permissions on the file to 777, edit the file in WP, then change the permissions to 755 when you’re done.
2. The only real edits you need to make to the file (if you want to select the words that people will have to enter to prove their humanity), is changing the word value (between the quotes) around line 34 to 43. Example:

   The first line contains: $cas_text[] = “snow”;
   I might modify it to: $cas_text[] = “spamhate”;

   Have fun with your words and make it custom to your site’s content, too. Makes it a bit more fun.

That’s all there really was to it. Now only time will tell how my sites stand up to the onslaught of spambots that plague my blogs on a DAILY basis. I was seriously tired of getting about a half dozen or more comment spams a day and had enough of it. Hopefully this triple protection will do the trick.

January 8, 2008, 10:30 am

Filed under: General, Websites, Wordpress
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Spent a little time perusing my blogroll and saw some cool resources that I wanted to highlight—perhaps if only for my own reference, but also for generating a little bit more awareness.

The first cool thing is this plug-in for Firefox called the Gmail manager. If you have more than one Gmail account like me, checking mail on said accounts is a bit of a hassle. Gtalk doesn’t help any because it’s account-specific. However with the Gmail manager plug-in for Firefox, you can toggle (with a right-click on the task bar) between accounts to see how many new messages you’ve got in either and a single-click sign-on. That RAWKS! It’s a must-have plug-in for Firefox.

The second cool thing that I came across today was what’s called Microformats. I know it’s probably been around for awhile, but it’s new to me. Esssentially it works like this…it’s a method of providing a dynamic feed of contacts, calendar events and reviews. I think generally Tails (these contacts and calendar feeds) are generally treated as a sort of sidebar type element or plug-in of Firefox and other more progressive bars (yes that would leave IE out of the picture).

I don’t fully understand tails, but I can see the potential…particularly with my band CRASH EFFECT. It’d be a great way to share our upcoming show information and allow people to add that information to their calendar with relative ease.

As far as the hCard goes, I don’t think that is such a great idea. With all the data mining software out there attempting to harvest more and more e-mail addresses (for spam purposes), the idea of openly sharing your contact information in a universal format spells trouble.

Anyway, here’s a brief tutorial for integrating Tails into WordPress that you might find interesting. As well as a web-based hCalendar Creator. But it looks like it wouldn’t be that difficult to create the feed manually. Below is an excerpt of what the code looks like to create an hCalendar feed:


<div class="vevent">
<a class="url" href="http://www.crasheffect.com">
<abbr class="dtstart" title="20060915T2000-0600">September 15th 8pm</abbr>,
<abbr class="dtend" title="20060916T2300-0600"> 11pm 2006</abbr> —
<span class="summary">My Event Name</span>— at
<span class="location">Saint Paul, MN</span>
</a>
<div class="description">This is my description tag here where I can fill in information about the event.</div>
</div>

It appears that the start title (20060915T2000-0600) is the following date coding convention:

YYYYMMDD T 24HOURTIME +/-GMT

So that is the 4-digit YEAR, 2-digit MONTH, 2-digit DAY, the letter T (for time), the 24-hour, four-digit format of the time (starting or ending depending upon the tag) and then followed by where you are in respect to GMT time. In our case here in Minnesota, -0600. So for today’s date and current time, it might look like this:

20060915T1000-0600
Translation: 9/15/2006 10:00 AM, -0600 GMT

Everything else in the tags seem pretty self-explanatory. If I find out more information about Microformats, I’ll be sure to post it here.

September 15, 2006, 10:01 am

Filed under: Applications, Development, Wordpress
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It’s not totally finished and there are two applications that I need to build for it, but the Crash Effect website is live and up and running.  I’ve even got a couple t-shirts in the merch table through Cafe Press…albeit temporary until we produce our own merchandise and can sell directly.

Anyway, if you haven’t yet, subscribe to the RSS feed for the blog and enjoy.

August 17, 2006, 11:51 am

Filed under: Artists, Awareness, General, Music, Websites, Wordpress
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