lies.com Upgraded to WordPress 1.5
There are lots of new goodies in WordPress 1.5, so tonight I upgraded the site to use it. Everything seems to be working at this point, but if you notice something wacky please let me know.
My main motivation in doing this upgrade is to fix some of the problems I’ve had with comments. Those problems have taken two forms: people I didn’t want to have commenting (basically, spammers) leaving comments, and people I did want to have commenting (you, the cherished lies.com readers) trying to comment and failing, due to the measures I was employing to stop the first group.
Anyway, the new version is reported to have some nifty new features to make this all work better. But I’m too tired to play with it now, so the comment spammers get a night to muck around to their hearts’ content (well, except spammers don’t have hearts).
Tomorrow I’ll take a look and see if I can get things working properly. Again, though, if you notice anything about the new system that seems noteworthy, let me know. Thanks.
February 19th, 2005 at 1:30 am
So, is this working?
February 19th, 2005 at 1:31 am
Looks like. Note that as of now, you have to be logged in as a user in order to leave a comment. I wonder how hard that new-user registration process is? Let’s go find out, shall we? (And then I promise I really am going to bed.)
February 19th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Hm. Yeah, that seems to work more or less okay.
Okay, people. If you’re a random reader who wants to comment, you now need to create an account to do so. It requires verifying that you have a valid email address, and then it cookies your browser, so you don’t have to worry about logging in every time.
The first time you comment, your comment will go into the moderation queue until an administrator approves it. (Currently, the admins are me, I think. Anyone else who wants to have that ability, let me know and I’ll figure out how to give it to you.) You still see your comment, though, with a “your comment is currently awaiting moderation” notice next to it. But no one else will see it until it gets approved.
Once a comment of yours has been approved, you’re white-listed, and subsequent comments by you will just appear right away.
Suck on that, spammers.
February 19th, 2005 at 8:45 am
Hm. Maybe you don’t need to be logged in to post a comment?
Ah, yeah. You don’t have to have a user account to leave a comment, but if you comment without having created a user account, your comments will always go in the moderation queue and await explicit approval. I think that’s probably a good approach.
February 19th, 2005 at 12:17 pm
Hm. No, I’m back to thinking you have to be logged in in order to comment. So that’s the way it works now.
If you can’t be bothered to create an account and log in, I think the value of your contribution to the site is probably going to be kind of low. Anyway, we’ll try it this way for a while.
February 19th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
Hooray, I am registered.
February 19th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Let’s see how long it takes for the spammers to try creating thousands of accounts…
March 18th, 2005 at 5:33 am
first rule of web design: registration is a barrier to entry.
stopping spammers is a good idea though. you could have tried one of those funnyletter boxes…
March 18th, 2005 at 6:19 am
Yes, I realize registration is a barrier to entry. I’m okay with that. If it’s too much trouble for someone to register, I’m betting their comment was unlikely to be very interesting anyway.
I like the current defaults that WordPress 1.5 employs very much: you have to register with a valid email address before you can post a comment, your first comment requires explicit administrator approval before it becomes publicly visible, and even after that, any comment containing more than three links also requires administrator approval.