I just upgraded this blog to Movable Type 3.17, and you may think this is a boring entry but it’s Very, Very Important, because it’s demonstrating to myself that everything works as it should. One reason I upgraded was to rule out problems with a corrupted mt-comments.cgi file or some other key Movable Type file.
I await tomorrow’s status message with interest. I also tuned a cron job that allows post-publishing so that it runs once an hour, not every fifteen minutes, and I’ll set it to every 3 or 4 hours once I puzzle out the string to do that.
After that, if my MT installation is still running amok on Dreamhost, then I don’t think it’s my installation. I’d be curious to get an account on another MT-friendly ISP and see how Free Range Librarian runs there.
Movable Type announced on Friday that version 3.2 is imminent, and among other issues, version 2 promises trackback moderation. That’s good, because trackback is now useless on Movable Type; I can’t be the only customer who killed it due to the deluge of spam. I’m grateful that MT is adding trackback moderation, which WordPress has had for a while.
Posted on this day, other years:
- The bread machine syndrome - 2015
- Buying a new car (and there's even an ALA 2008 tie-in) - 2008
- Another great ALA - 2008
- Do Not Disrespect Old Glory - 2007
- This is not what I'm reading: The Best American Essays 2006 - 2006
Let’s see if this link to Amazon is now automatically a hotlink: http://amazon.com
You don’t have to surrender to trackback or comment spam. About three months ago my blog was so hammered by spammers that my host suspended my account. I immediately made these changes:
1. Began periodically creating a random name (composed of letters and numbers) for the mt comment script (and updating the name in mt . cfg as well. I used to change the name every day, but now do it once or twice a week.
2. Switched from using the MT-Blacklist plug to SpamLookup. It’s made a tremendous difference, particularly regarding trackback spam. It’s no longer a problem for me. I highly recommend it.
I’m not being bombarded by comment spam; in fact since they moved me to an evaluation server the spammers can’t seem to find me at all, ho ho ho. The problem is runaway usage problems with comments.cgi that I can’t isolate.