mu.nu - We're sorry we accidentally destroyed your panties.

October 02, 2004

Spambot Solution???

Bill Whittle wants to know what to do about all the spam that's infesting his comments threads. His friend Great Hairy Silverback (GHS) is busy deleting 700+ spam messages per diem.

I had an idea about setting a Password to get in without requiring registration. I could work like this:

GHS shows up and clicks on Comment.
He sees a window that says
"In order to read and/or leavce a comment, Ye must give the secret Password. The secret Password is EJECT. But, don't tell anyone, m'kay?"

GHS types in the word eject and gets into the Comments.

While any breathing person will be able to get in, the spambots will be thwarted.

Heehee!!!

Of course, I have no farkin' idea HOW to set that up, but I'd like to know how so's I can do that on my own blog if some day I start getting Helen-sized spam dumps in my Comments. Is it even possible? Anybody? Beuller?

Posted by: Tuning Spork at 10:04 PM | Comments (85) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

October 01, 2004

It's Here!

The new Munuserver is up and running!

Now I'm just repartitioning the raid volumes of a server on the other side of the planet while it's up and running.

At least if I screw it up no-one will know.

Hmm. Or I could just do this. Yes, that will work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:14 AM | Comments (76) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 30, 2004

Llama Nuts n Bolts Question

I have been having trouble lately getting our blogroll to load. The main column seems fine, but the site seems to get stuck towards the end of the upload, leaving the blogroll off.

Anything I can do about that?

-Robert the Llama Butcher

Posted by: Robert at 09:51 PM | Comments (71) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Debating Mu.Nu Style

Any interest in a debate party in the Mu.Nu Chat? The debate starts at 9:00. Stop by and vent, rant or cheer. I would offer to supply refreshments but this going to have be strictly BYOB for logistical reasons. This will also be a clothing optional event.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 06:46 PM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Basic MT Blacklist – step by step.

This is a followup to the earlier primer that described what Blacklist does. Now it’s time to actually put it to work.

First, let's make sure it is turned on for your blog.

Go to http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/mt-blacklist.cgi If you’re not already logged in, you’ll be asked for your blog's username and password. Enter it. You’ll be brought to a screen as shown below. Click on the box labelled Configure.

Blacklist configure screenshot


This is the next screen you’ll see. You want to make sure that there is a checkmark in both the Comments and Trackbacks boxes. (you'll likely only see the title of your own blog, not the several that you see in this screenshot.) Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Configuration.

Blacklist block screenshot


Once you’ve done that, your blog is ready to take advantage of Blacklist’s automatic protection capabilities.

The majority of spam should get blocked before it reaches you, but if you find that your blog has received a number of spam comments (if it’s just 1 or 2, it’s just as easy to go into your admin page and delete them from there), you’re going to want to get into the Blacklist again, either by using the address you used earlier, or by clicking the De-spam link at the bottom of one of the comment notification emails you received. When you get to the Blacklist page, you’re going to click on the De-Spam button, which will take you to the page shown below. (If you got to the page via the link at the bottom of an email, you'll be taken directly to the De-spam page.)

Blacklist search screenshot

Here, you can set the number of recent comments to check. I usually ask it to go through the last 2500, to be sure. It’s also worth asking it to check the last 15,000 or so the first time you do this - and only the first time, as it really stresses the server - in case you’ve got old spam comments hiding from a long time ago. (We're talking about the last n comments on all of MuNu, so that's why the search number needs to be so high). Once your number's entered, click Search.

If it finds any comments which it has been taught are spam, it will list them on the page, and give you the option of un-checking any that you actually want to keep (a good security feature). Once you’ve decided which to delete, tell Blacklist to get rid of them, and it will also rebuild the entries that need it.

If you have a whack of spam, but the Blacklist doesn’t find it, and you’re not thoroughly familiar with how to create new entries in the Blacklist, you can just wait a couple hours, and come back and try again. It’s entirely possible that in the meantime, an experienced user will have encountered it as well, and will have created entries that will let Blacklist find & clean yours. (Pixy is famous for doing this incredibly well) I’ve got some ideas for how to increase the likelihood of that happening, but that’s for another post.

So there are the the basic steps in the arcane art of the Blacklist. If anything's unclear, be sure to ask.

Paul

Posted by: PaulT at 07:56 AM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

MT Blacklist primer.

Since Linda & others have asked, this is just a quick backgrounder for Munuvians trying to get their heads around what Blacklist is and does.

Blacklist is a piece of code, or ‘plug-in’ that is installed into the core of Moveable Type to help block comment spam. Because it’s installed into the core of MT (not on individual blogs), its settings affect every blog at MuNu. And therein lies its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

If a spam comment is received by one of us, and an appropriate entry made into the Blacklist as a result, any further attempts to add similar comments to any other MuNu blog will be automatically blocked. That’s good.

It also means that if a spammer dumps a huge amount of junk on us at once, before we have time to alert Blacklist to the problem, we can still retroactively add an appropriate entry to the Blacklist, then tell Blacklist to go back and look at all the last 1000 (or however many) comments, and automatically delete any that it finds that match the new criteria we just added, so we don’t have to delete them all by hand. That’s also good.

Posted by: PaulT at 04:21 AM | Comments (93) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

MuNu Mk III

Well, it came down to a bigger, faster server at our existing hosting company, Liquid Web, or an also bigger and faster but not quite as bigger and faster server at another company, Server Matrix.

Liquid Web kindly helped me make my decision by hiking up their prices twice in the past month. The Liquid Web server ended up at $350 setup and $339 per month, compared to the Server Matrix server at $199 setup and $219 per month. The Liquid Web server was nicer in some ways, but not $120 a month worth of nicer.

So, stats of the new server:

Dual Xeon 2.4GHz with HyperThreading™
1GB ECC memory (ECC = extra crunchy)
2 x 200GB disks (mirrored)
1500GB bandwidth per month
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
CPanel & Fantastico
Urchin web analyser thingy
I'll be setting up MT 3.11 and EE 1.1 on the new server rather than on the existing one, because that way I can play around without having to worry about breaking anything.

Although they specify 2.4GHz processors, that's really a minimum, and if we're lucky we'll get 2.8's instead. Also, they have HyperThreading™ so it looks like a quad-processor machine instead of just a dual-processor machine. In reality, it's only 10% or 20% faster, but every bit counts.

Now I get to play with my new toy for a while before I start moving people across.

Oh, and I think I've solved the problem with future bandwidth growth: The secret is reverse proxies.

Update: The folks at Server Matrix just called. They're setting up our server now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:27 AM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 29, 2004

Two IT Questions!

My chickens, I need some help.

First off, I am sick and bloody tired of comment spambots, and I want to close all posts older than 2 weeks. I can't keep deleting 300 comments a morning. It's whipping me. Does anyone know of a code (and where to put the code) to automatically do that?

Also, a pc question-I just replaced the fan in my pc, and now it shuts itself down (not just on standby, but actually closed down). Any ideas on how/where to change this on the settings, so that it will stop doing this?

Thanks!
-Helen

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:42 AM | Comments (86) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

It's likely not worth mentionin'

I dunno, but I thought tonight's Navel Gazin' Report™ was one of the best pieces of humor I have composed of late. What do ya'll think?

Posted by: Tiger at 05:47 AM | Comments (78) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Eekage Is Over

And we still seem to be on the 800GB plan.

I'm still looking for a bigger, faster, shinier server, but for now at least I don't have to rush into it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 AM | Comments (86) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 28, 2004

No Notification

For some reason, lately, I haven’t been getting email notification of comments.

Anyone know what’s up with that?

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at 07:53 AM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 26, 2004

Time To Moove?

Liquidweb came back and said they couldn't do anything for us. And it took them forever to actually say that.

So I'm currently looking at a server with another company, and we may end up moving house next weekend.

I'll keep you posted.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:59 AM | Comments (74) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

questionable content

Is anyone else having a problem with people reporting comments not posting due to 'questionabl content', when the comment contains no such thing?

I've had a few lately, whereas I seem to be able to post comments with any old swear words I want in my own blog. And I've also been able to post other people's comments for them even though they keep getting the error!

Any ideas? Much appreciated .

Posted by: goldie at 01:19 AM | Comments (79) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 25, 2004

BLOGIVERSARY!!!

Hey, fellow Munuvians. I just thought I'd let you all know that today is my 1 year blogiversary. I'd like to thank Pixy Misa for rescuing me from BlogSpot and making it possible to keep posting for this long. Also, thanks to everyone who has come to my site, even if you were just browsing the MuNu blogroll.

That's about it.

Posted by: CD at 08:37 PM | Comments (72) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 24, 2004

The Ongoing Eekage

(Click on the image for a full-size version.)

munu_mrtg.png

We've gone from less than 10GB per day to around 40GB. Which is rather more than I'd bargained for. Hope Liquidweb gets back to me soon, or I'm toast.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:06 AM | Comments (84) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 23, 2004

Archive Template Help

I want to change my archive template to look just like my main page template. I've tried several of my own homegrown tweaks and I'm doing something wrong. I just can't seem to turn it from a single column to a dual column. I figure that if I put all my links up in a sidebar in all of my archives, I might get some people to click around my blogroll, including my munuvian blogroll--more traffic all around!!

Posted by: Rusty at 09:30 PM | Comments (83) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Very strange things

Okay, so my blog does this very strange thing (sometimes) when viewed in Firefox (and, I'm told, Safari and probably some other non-IE browsers).

Sometimes on the main page (and on the other pages) the first post present doesn't "word wrap" properly (or at all). All the other posts do, though. Then, if a link within the body of the post is visible you can just drag your mouse over it and the post pops into place with proper word wrapping and display and everything. It's fine after that.

I have to believe (both out of vanity and out of how it works) that this is not a problem in my CSS coding but is instead something going on with the browsers (because it displays well after the link is rolled over).

The other weird thing is that the page I stole the basic layout from doesn't have this problem at all. Is there something I can do, or should I just live with it?

Posted by: Daniel at 03:03 PM | Comments (85) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

No Pixy!

Pfui!

pixymisa.com, which I've had hosted elsewhere for years, has expired. I've poked the folks responsible with a stick, but in the meantime you can always reach me at andrew -at- pixymisa -dot- net.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:08 AM | Comments (71) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Haiku Contest

Victor, without asking me, mind you, has declared it Joe Don Baker Haiku Day at annika's journal.

i turned it into a contest. There is a prize, if anyone's interested.

Posted by: annika at 01:43 AM | Comments (77) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

September 22, 2004

Oops

I contacted our hosting provider to ask about moving from our 500GB plan to an 800GB plan, and they're getting me pricing on that.

Except that it seems that they had already mistakenly put me on the 800GB plan without charging me for it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:43 PM | Comments (80) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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