Pankaj Kumar's Weblog

This blog didn't accept comments due to excessive comment-spam for a long time. And paid a heavy price.

But that is history. I upgraded to the latest and greatest MovableType-3.33 today. Well, it was more like destroying the old blog and creating a new one! I had to install 3.33 from scratch, export all the entries from the previous installation and import them into the new one. Managed to keep the main page, but individual entries got new URLs. Thankfully, the archived copies are still around at their old URLs, though they look weird due to the CSS link to the new installation (here is an example -- contrast it with the page served by the new installation). I will have to do something about it.

And this happened when comments were enabled only on two entries and that too for just 6 hours. Very encouraging!

Though I now worry about "denial of service" effect of the comment spams. The built-in filters rely on analyzing the comment text and checking URl blacklist sites and perhaps waste CPU cycles. I will be monitoring the junk folder closely and would not hesitate adding a CAPTCHA test to the comment submission page on excessive spamming (say, more than 50 per day).