I spent a lot of time cleaning up and tweaking the comments system, though most of the changes won't be immediately noticeable. As an administrator I now have the ability to edit and delete comments, which will come in handy if any spam bots find me.

I've decided against using a captcha system, since I did a little research and found that most spammers use just the bots to find a site, then post manually. I'm thinking of working up a blacklist system similar to MT Blacklist, which will search the comment for links to known spammer sites and disallow any comments that do. Another option is a whitelist setup, where I approve a user's email address before their posts can go straight onto the site, but that can discourage comment conversation with new posters. If anyone has any suggestions for a spambot prevention system I'd appreciate it.

Some other comments tweaks include stripping all but certain HTML tags, adding a rel='nofollow' to links, and the ability to link directly to a particular comment.

Next on the agenda: a real blog entry system, so I don't have to use SQL inserts anymore.

	Name *
	Email (will not be published) *
	Website
	Are you a spammer?
	Are you sure you're not a spammer?

• September 2007 (3)
• April 2007 (4)