Colon Blow and Movable Type 3.2
September 9th, 2005Awhile ago I wrote that I’d love it if the parasite douchebags who practice comment spamming websites and the shit they spew could be relegated to a Junk folder, never to see the light of day and whose whoredoms are deleted from my database on a regular basis without any act whatsoever from me. Movable Type 3.2 has this functionality. It is SWEET.
But all was not smooth in the migration to 3.2 for this site. My templates hadn’t been upgraded since several versions ago. So my comments script that I run to turn off comments on old posts killed my comments altogether after the upgrade. I didn’t notice this, as my most recent posts are left open for comment until I deem. I close comments for a couple of reasons. One, partially due to an untapped and unrealized God complex and two, partially due to an overdeveloped sense of needing to be able to shut someone the hell up when I want.
So I didn’t notice my missing comments for a few days. I fixed the script, but that meant re-opening all my old comments. I don’t care that much, but some of the conversations are over and I want to keep moving forward, man, because the future, man, the future…
There are a couple of ways, with Movable Type 3.2 to fix this. The first is to use the tag MTIfCommentsActive instead of the MTEntryIfAllowComments tag. Then follow these instructions. I have no idea what this does aside from create a new template, but I did it and it works with my comment closing script.
The Accept Comments checkbox appears to work with the desired effectl if unchecked, it effectively turns off comments. If there are existing comments, they stay on the page and the correct message indicating that comments are closed displays. Extra sweet, if a little confusng.
September 9th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Ah, the joys of working a popular blog. In some ways I’m glad mine sucks and nobody bothers to look at it.
The whole comment thing with blogs is tricky: do you piss people off by killing their comments or do you let the reflection-of-society thing run its course? There are benefits to both, I guess. One sided conversations are dull, but reading hateful stuff isn’t fun either.
Good luck. I think I’ll stick with my obscurity a little while longer, at least until I write better comment control into my home grown blog…
September 10th, 2005 at 3:48 am
god complex is exactly right.
beware those who feign holiness.
ye will know them by the soles of their shoes, not the links of their blogposts.
you my think i’m a jerk, but i’m an honest jerk, my smugness is a bright orange jacket.
camoflauge — hmm, jury’s out on that one.
helloooooo makers!
September 10th, 2005 at 3:52 am
btw,
no joke, the most self righteous traffic i ever get comes from here, trust me, i don’t give a @#$%^^& about no steenking traffic.
i always thought armstrong was an individual thinker.
sometimes it seems like utah reactionary stuff. that’s all.
you can thank rss for my returns. it’s soooo easy.
September 10th, 2005 at 8:20 am
28% Utah reactionary. Spend some time on MetaFilter. If you love self-righteousness…
Also, Merkley, I don’t hate you. Just your button pushing.
September 10th, 2005 at 10:07 am
i should not blog hop while drunk. that’s most of what happened above.
but yeah, i can’t imagine what else i’d do with a big blinking button… itchy fingers..
the other part is that almost every time i get some random dickhead commenter like the ones you mentioned above, the kind that come in and scream their head off about how terrible i am and what not, they come from these parts. one of them is a nightmarish stalker who has been known to pummel me with a bajillion emails a day. not your fault i know, but tell that to the whiskey and coke.
anyway,
leta looks just like you, guess we won’t be seein ya on maury. good kid ya got there.
September 10th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
Uh…yeah… whatever. I’m still just clodding along with blogger…unknown and unappreciated. (j/k) Glad you’re getting things to work the way you want them, tho’! I DO understand how frustrating it is when things don’t cooperate.
September 10th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
I would take all shit….spam….junk…comments if my site (blog) was 1/2 the site yours was!!! Keep up the good work!
September 10th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
I Have no blog. No spammers, no critics, no groupies, no stalkers, no fans, no visitors. I am blogless. I have no web site, no blog, no story. I am a stowaway on the good ship blurbomat.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Spammers have recently found my site and they’re starting to piss me off. I could turn on word verification but I don’t want to hinder real people from commenting. For right now I’m just deleting them.
September 11th, 2005 at 7:30 pm
While I can’t speak for everyone else, and perhaps I’m still trying to get over the cancellation of Melrose Place, but I would *love* to one day hear more about this merkley triple preguntamark character and how he relates to the history of one DJ blurb.
I’m usually not one to cave to something potentially gossipy but it’s reared its head just enough that I can’t help but wonder.
September 11th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
btw Impy…shhhhh or they might make you walk the plank lol.
September 11th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
I’m not familiar with Movable Type, other that the knowledge that it is a common CMS/blog template system. But, in WordPress you can filter out junk comments based on keywords. I’m sure MT has something similar. In WP, I filter all the comments that have a word on my spam list into a moderation queue and then I can approve it or trash it. Just FYI. Glad to hear about the upgrade and new features. This site is still fun to visit, and being a techie kind of guy also, I can appreciate the ‘under the hood’ type of posts. Keep up the good work Jon.
September 12th, 2005 at 9:05 am
I’m currently workin’ on a friend’s blog design, which makes use of MT. This is all new for me, still tryin’ to learn. I expect to develop Moveable Type Hair in the very near future.
September 12th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but at first I thought this post (and the old post it linked to) were literally about the product called Colon Blow! Although it sounds like a joke, it is a real product I have used several times. I am constantly constipated (yes, like Heather) and once I got so desperate I actually ordered Colon Blow from the website. It works, although since I also have IBS, I just got constipated and bloated immediately the next day.
Good luck getting rid of comment spam — if this works, will Heather open comments back up as well?
September 12th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
Gotta echo Starla Dear on asking if dooce will get comments back. ‘Cause I really wanted to comment about your comment to your “INVENTION.” Reading that gave me my big-smile-of-the-day. Ain’t parenthood grand?
September 13th, 2005 at 7:29 am
I don’t know. I kinda like dooce without comments. That way Heather’s inestimable wit is the definitive characteristic of the site and her awesome writing isn’t underlined by readers who just want to add their 2 cents (like me). Definitely keep comments here for dialogue, but I like the purity of dooce.
September 13th, 2005 at 8:58 am
Not to step on your techie toes…but you can write a function in PHP that will filter comments based on keywords. I personally don’t use moveable-type, but I seem to remember that it uses SQL and PHP.
September 13th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Like Impy, I am a blogless hitchhiker . I have read Dooce for a while, am in fact a Dooce junkie.. and laughed a lot at the orange- juice-as-acid-for-babies story.
(Seriously, though, don’t let the babysitter give Leta fruit juice or anything sweet in a sippy cup. That way tooth decay lieth.) Doth this thuck?
September 13th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I had to turn on that whole “verification” thing on my site because of that. I dont understand why they think spam works. Unless it DOES. Somehow, that I don’t know about. Who are these douche bags? Why isn’t it legal to set them on fire?
September 13th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
Spammers expect a 1 in 1,000,000 return rate (one sale for every million spam sent) and it costs next to nothing to do it. Yup, it’s all about low expectations and even lower overhead.
September 13th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
1. the photos on your blog are stunning
2. why do people believe colon blow works?
3. really? you care if people comment on old posts? I never really thought about it. I would probably secretly. Shit, now its not a secret anymore, but anyway, I would probably feel a little pumped up that anyone thought I was good enough, or in my case, was mesmerizingly drawn in enough by the train wreck of my writing, to read my old posts.
September 13th, 2005 at 4:15 pm
My understanding at least in regards to comment spam is that they’re not leaving comments in hopes of people clicking the links but instead upping their ranks in Google. So, for example, some casino leaves their link all over the internet, once someone searches “casino” in Google, their casino will pop up first or on the first page. Because google gives weight to the highest number of “content” sites that link to you.
So even if no one clicks them, they will be seen in other ways. (They’re special in other ways.)
I sort of wish Google would stop noticing them if they use certain words. But that could pose a problem. Who knows.
Anyway…
September 13th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could block commentary in day to day life sometimes…
September 13th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Dear Blurb, Please recommence with the naming of whores. Must. Have. Whores.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
…and yes, I DID have to google colon blow when I left here, but I’ll shut up now.