Asymptomatic

I wrote another plugin for WordPress that limits the categories that are displayed on teh edit post page for users who do not have a high enough user level.

What does this mean?

If you are participating in some kind of guest-blogging activity, like Free For All Friday, then you can turn on this plugin and your guests will be able to post only to the categories you specify....

I got some comment spam today in my moderation queue (trapped by OSA 1.1, actually) that pointed to a live blog in addition to the traditional "you may be interested in" spam links. I checked out the blog and found this page, which I thought was quite humorous.

I took a screenshot to share it with you, since they're likely to fix the problem if they're a legit site. I didn't include a link to them since they may yet be affiliated with spamming.

I'm guessing that spammers are starting to add links to random blogs into their spam comments so that it's not easy to slam all of the links from a known spamming IP into a wordlist. That's unfortunate, but there may yet be a way around that, too.

No, it's not anything rabbit related. Steph aka "Bunny" wrote a new plugin for WordPress that I'm taking for a spin. This is the first post I'm writing with it, so I'm not even really sure what it will do. Something about Technorati...

Lots to say about comment spam today...

Have you noticed the new tactic the spammers are using to get spam onto WordPress sites? They're sending comment spam without any URLs. You think that's a good thing and that the spammers are just crazy? I'll explain why you're being lulled into a false sense of security.

There is a toggle in WordPress (this may be a 1.5-only thing - I haven't checked in 1.2) that sends all comments to moderation unless that user has commented before. There are actually a couple of spam plugins that check this, too, automatically whitelisting anyone who has already left an approved comment. This is a good thing, but you have to be careful not to get duped into approving a spammer's unobtrusive comment....

Every time I update Spam Karma it takes significant tweaking to get it to work. Today, it's just plain dead.

This is a real problem since I had been recommending Spam Karma to everyone with WordPress as the ultimate comment spam solution. But I can't do that any more.

Rather than concentrate on the WordPress future, version 1.5, it seems like retroactive functions are more important to Spam Karma development. In fact, it seems like adding functions that deal with past comments have been prioritized over getting the spam filtering system to work correctly on new incoming spams. Ever since upgrading to version 1.11, for instance, I no longer get the comment content in my deletion digests. In this latest version, I'm led to doubt that the comment body is even processed for spam criteria....