Yes, there are personal attacks, I know. I am looking for some feedback for you folks who have your own blogs about your spam situation. I have pretty good filters, though some things slither through (and I use that verb pointedly). I am forever clearing spam out of the fliter.
In any event, if you chime in, let us know also what you are using for your blog. This, for example, is in WordPress, on a dedicated server.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
Loading ...
A Daily Prayer for Priests
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265
on FOR SALE: “BeatifyStickler: Not coast to coast. We have plenty of reverent NO Masses in Vancouver (including at the cathedral where Latin…”
on POLL: Covering images for Passiontide, 5th Sunday of Lent – 2023: “TonyO, I’d say one or two logical possibilities were missing. My experience was “didn’t have time to go looking” —…”
on FOR SALE: “Many would see this as something good and necessary: get rid of this old medieval stuff. They are places for…”
on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) 2023 and a POLL about veiled images: “We had a very nice crowd for the High Mass for The Annunciation on Saturday (around 300) and then on…”
on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) 2023 and a POLL about veiled images: “All the main statues were covered, but not the Stations of the Cross. We have so many statues. Some are…”
on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) 2023 and a POLL about veiled images: “We (the Ordinariate) use the same lectionary as the Novus Ordo, except instead of the NAB the RSV-CE is used.…”
on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) 2023 and a POLL about veiled images: “In the Community Centre/Gym that I was in for Mass yesterday there were no statues visible to veil. However there…”
on MUST READ! Why do heretics remain in the Church instead of just being honest and getting out?: “Note that the later Pope Benedict thinks his 2nd hypothesis is a hypothesis, it could be. I quite agree to…”
on FOR SALE: “I lived in Nova Scotia as a child. This is where the Latin Mass was said in the late 80’s…”
on WDTPRS – 5th Sunday of Lent: Liturgical death throes: ““From today, in the Extraordinary Form the “Iudica” psalm is no longer said during the prayers at the foot of…”
on FOR SALE: “If I had the money I’d buy all of these churches and turn them into oratories. In an unrelated but…”
on FOR SALE: “@TheBackPew: how much? Thinking lots of millions USD. Demolition of a building this size (how I know has much to…”
on FOR SALE: “It also comes with a fully functional pipe organ. (There’s a community of church organists quite interested in the organ).…”
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful.
That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
My "challenge coin" for my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2016.
Want one? I do exchanges with military and LEOs, etc.
Loading ...If you travel internationally, this is a super useful gizmo for your mobile internet data. I use one. If you get one through my link, I get data rewards.
Loading ...
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
Use my code for a discount
Visits tracked by Statcounter
since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
Father: I’m cheap. I use the free web-based Blogger.com (I’m still using Old Blogger, I have not switched to the Google based version). I never have spam on the blog. I do have a very strong firewall and anti-virus software set up on my PC. However, I think setting Blogger.com so that each commenter has to input the word verification before the post goes up stops the automatic spam trollers. You can restrict commenters to only registered bloggers or group members too if you want. I don’t have Ad Sense (Ads on my blog) I don’t know if having Ads on Blogger enables spam to get through or not.
I use Blogger but I am thinking of switching to WordPress (I maintain a couple of WP blogs for work) if I ever get to the stage at which I am making regular updates. Spam can be avoided on Blogger simply by disallowing comments. Unfortunately Blogger doesn’t have any cool tools like Askimet Spam to filter out spam comments.
You could add a simple math problem as Pontificator has. The operative word is “simple”….no algebra problems, please. He uses WordPress also. Blogger, which I use, has word verification…distorted letters which are sometimes hard to read (double r’s are sometime hard to distinguish from m’s, ditto for double v’s from w’s). Comment moderation can be a headache if your time is limited (if, ha!).
I have blogger, and I have word verification; that screens out most spam.
However, every once in a while some shows up; I guess someone is posting it live. I delete it.
Just yesterday, I noticed a new sort of spam, that worked through my site meter. I was scanning the referrals in the site meter (it’s an easy way to find out if anyone’s linked my blog, a bit of vanity on my part), and clicked on one of them. It turned out to be some sort of nonsense blog; nothing made any sense. I don’t know if it counts as spam, but there must be some reason it was there — my suspicion is that it was to get me to do just what I did. Weird.
Father, unlike most other bloggers I know, I use a commercial package called Expression Engine from pmachine.com. It’s a very powerful and extensible system that can be used for much more than blogging. It has extensive security features built in. I have image verification plus comment moderation and the combination of the two seems to work fine.
Fr. Fox, referrer spam is particularly pernicious. Thankfully ExpressionEngine uses a blacklist to blog spammers as well so many of them don’t even get into the site. Referrer spam is used to boost their Google search ranking.
Domenico: Yes, that referrer stuff is annoying. My filters catch virtually everything, however. It is interesting to read about what people are doing for their blogs.
To get better control over the flood of junk, I had to move the stblogs.org sites to an Apache server I administer personally.
That lets me customize Apache “mod_security” pattern rules to detect and block the submission of junk comments; it’s more efficient for the server than making the blog software spend time processing or rejecting them.
“mod_security” is tricky, though: incautiously defined rules can interfere with your normal use of the blog software.
I use Blogger and all the comments are sent by Blogger to my email account for moderation. Since my comment traffic is very low, it’s not a big deal. One of my readers is blind (I think) and his screen reader can’t read the word verification graphic, so moderation is convenient for both me and for him.
Fr. Z: I’m surprised you don’t have some kind of word verification.
I got “baptized” only about a month in when I posted a photo of one of our priests kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament during a holy hour for vocations and someone posted in a lewd comment (which was actually an advertisement for something sexual). I then turned on word verification and have not had any further incididents.
Dom: Thanks for that interesting piece of technical info.
I have a blog at http://latine.wordpress.com/ and since April of 2006 I received no spam, no comments, no traffic, nothing. I must be doing something right.
Okay everyone! Go look at Andrews blog!! You can learn all about the latin word for \”crane\” today, so put on your crane bills and get out your Lewis & Short!
o{]:^
I found the word verification on Blogger works a trick!