With the new blog upgrade, the old password thing doesn’t work anymore. Jeb is experimenting with junk filters and not using a password at all. But I set up my blog to use TypeKey which is a free service from the blog makers (Movable Type) to allow people to register and comment on any blog. I kind of like that because it lets people outside the family add comments, but it should stop junk (I guess if someone posts blog spam their TypeKey account is revoked, but if they are just obnoxious then I can put a block on that person).
I don’t think there is a way to do both, so if you would like to be able to post comments on my blog you will need to sign up for a free TypeKey account and log on when you comment. Please try it out. It only takes a few minutes to sign up, then you have to respond an e-mail to activate your account. The only problem is you have to use the same name all the time instead of getting to make up a name depending on whose blog you are commenting on (like “Mom” or “Gramalie”), so now I will just be “brted” (my usual internet alias) instead of “UT”.
Anyway, the TypeKey thing is working already because a guy made a very good comment to my entry about Mom’s new notebook computer.
No no no no. Do not make your mother sign up for TypeKey. And even though Mom is pretty technically hip, you surely should not make your father sign up for TypeKey… or your sister. The choices on the Feedback settings are enough to create a pretty complex matrix. Allow anyone to post and then decide to either auto publish anyone or auto publish authenticated only. Even if you auto publish anyone, junk will still not publish. That’s the thing that isn’t obvious at first blush because you start off saying “Anyone” but *not* just anyone can auto publish. I’m allowing anyone, and I’ve turned on auto publish for anyone. If the junk gets too bad we’ll put the password back in.
I’m confident that all of our relatives are smart enough to use TypeKey and I hope everyone will post a comment to prove it.
I’ve already had a spam comment make it through the filter, so I’m not optimistic about relying on that. Oddly, that spammer posted twice on my blog and it caught one and didn’t catch the other.
Typekey lets you have a “nickname” that you can change any time you want to whatever you want. Your login name is always the same. When you comment, the nickname will be shown. So I can be “UT” again.
Well, maybe not.
Oh, I had it set to stayed signed in for two weeks, so I had to sign out and then sign back in before leaving a comment.
I tried to post a comment to Stonegate and, even though I had a name and e-mail address, it said my comment was denied and I needed to supply a name and e-mail address. I even tried putting in a URL and it still wouldn’t work.
I just added a comment to Stonegate, Kelly’s Kicks, and JEB-LOG. I was not using TypeKey at the time (as I am now) so I wonder if that has something to do with it.
Installed CCode anti-spam code on JEB-LOG, Stonegate, and Ted’s Blog. If these three stop getting spam-bot generated comments while others continue to get them, then we know this works. Peeking at the source of a comment page (individual archive) reveals the long encrypted key sent to the “obfuscator” function.
Yesterday I set the days for the system to hold junk until it was automatically deleted to zero days. I noticed I got a piece of junk yesterday and I didn’t delete it. Now it is gone.
shoud I get a “typekey” account? Will it “help” with anything?
Am I using too many “quotations?”
Am I asking too many “questions?”
You don’t really need a TypeKey account right now, “Eric”. Blogmaster J has set up some good spam filtering that will allow anyone to comment but block junk. So far so good. In fact, being logged in to Typekey will actually cause some problems when you try to comment on other blogs here, so I am not using it.