Comment spam on MT

Does anyone know more than I do – this is very likely – about banning comment spam? I have a poster, not automatic, who always uses the same Yahoo address, but advertises different URLs and obviously has different IP addresses every time. I know I could get this person banned from Yahoo under that address, but it seems pointless, since they could get another one with no problem. At a very cursory glance, I see no way of banning a specific email address.

(LATER NOTE: I’ve got MT Blacklist installed and it’s excellent, but as far as I can see it doesn’t block specific email addresses – but RL’s comment suggests it does. What am I overlooking?)

I’ve been thinking of leaving Movable Type for a long time, and the latest wave of departures encourages me that there are alternatives. It’s not the fee structure that worries me, but the fact that very few providers in Germany can run MT, and I don’t want to get my own server. Before I moved to another provider, my posting brought the server down and I was banned for a day. It would be nice to be on a system that doesn’t do that, if there is one.

8 thoughts on “Comment spam on MT

  1. @RL: Ja, aber ich sehe einfach nicht, wo ich eine E-Mail-Adresse blockieren kann, nur IPs und URLs. Wo mache ich das?

    @Trevor: does it work without problems? I have thought about an American one but I thought British ones were as limited as the German ones. Do you know anything about how long English sites allow for scripts to run?

  2. Your host doesn’t have to be in Germany.

    I’m with http://www.34sp.com, and they’re based in Manchester, UK. I pay the paltry sum of £15 a year for their hosting.

    If you update to Movable Type 3.0 (free edition – maximum one author and three blogs), it’s now possible to delete comments in bulk.

    http://www.typekey.com is another development from the MT people. I haven’t had time to work out how to integrate it into my comments template yet, but I’ll get round to it soon. It’s basically a comments registration system – you get to clear or refuse people trying to comment on your blog. Once they’re blocked, they’re blocked forever.

  3. Thanks, Jez. You recommended me that once before, but I wasn’t able to find out how much bandwidth / time I get for executing scripts. Your blog is not as big as mine and doesn’t have photos. I need to know if I could find another provider where MT would run comfortably. My present provider is excellent but is a one-man spare-time operation and I am planning ahead.

    About the comments, I am not interested in comments registration. Comments registration always stops me commenting – I read somewhere it’s said to cut comments by 90%. For this reason, I won’t be upgrading to the developers’ edition of MT 3.0, although I may upgrade later, but I can’t see any advantage at the moment.

    I see you mention deleting comments in bulk, but I wonder if that helps against a steady dribble of comments from one Yahoo address with different URLs being advertised. At the moment I’m using a script to bar comments on posts over 30 days old, and opening one or two posts to override this.

    I have just googled hrie@yahoo.com and I see I am not alone!

  4. Das erinnert mich an meine fruehere Frage, ob es nicht eine Ecke im Internet fuer technische Eroerterungen von rechtsbezogenen Blogs gibt, und wenn nicht, ob man nicht eine gemeinsame einrichten sollte. Blog oder Wiki (RL?). Ist ja immer hilfreich, vor dem eigenen Strampeln zu lesen, was andere bereits erlebt haben.
    Mir nuetzt zwar eine Eroerterung anderer Blogsysteme nicht direkt, aber man lernt immer hinzu, und man kann eigene Erfahrungen dokumentieren, die anderen Juristen nuetzen moegen.
    Ein weiterer Vorteil waere, dass nicht jedes Blog technische Fragen mit dem eigentlichen Thema vermischen muesste. Und schliesslich kann man bei einer uebersichtlichen Gestaltung auch die juristenspezifische Technik aufgrund gemeinsam erkannter Beduerfnisse weiterentwickeln.
    Thematisch etwas abwegig, Margaret, tut mir leid, aber der Anlass ergibt sich aus der Meldung :-)

  5. @ck: Mich stört es nicht, aber wäre das nicht etwas problematisch? Zehn oder zwanzig Blawgers mit verschiedenen Blogsoftware, die verschiedene Probleme haben?

    Bisher habe ich meine besten Erfolge für MT-Tipps einfach mit Google gehabt. Hätte ich bloß diesmal auch die Adresse des Spammers in Google eingegeben:

    “hrie@yahoo.com”

    hätte ich gesehen, dass andere gespammt werden und dass niemand eine Lösung kennt. (Die Adresse ist vielleicht sogar falsch, sodass eine Änderung bei Yahoo selber noch weniger als sonst bringen würde).

    MT hat ein Hilfeforum, aber es ist von Freiwilligen gemacht, die sehr viel von dem Programm halten, so dass einiges dort nicht gut diskutiert werden kann.

  6. If your problem is timeouts on rebuilds then http://mt-plugins.org/archives/entry/optimizehtml.php will help. Various other hints here: http://weblog.cemper.com/a/200401/02-performance-tuning-movable-type.php

    However, looking at your site there’s no way you should be getting this kind of stuff at the moment, so you probably need a new host. http://www.webfusion.co.uk provide a good basic service for about £90 pa which you could earn back in a couple of months if you put ads on the site.

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