It's clear that comment spam and crapflooding have become such a problem at MuNu that they're interfering with Munuvians' ability to enjoy their blogs.
One of the challenges at Munu is that, because we are all connected under one MT install, changes or problems generated on one blog can cause difficulties or vulnerabilities for everyone else at the same time. In addition, we also have users of a wide range of experience, from almost none to Pixy-God.
However! This interconnected community can also be used to the advantage of all Munuvians if we choose to work with the situation, instead of against it.
What we need:
My suggestion:
Any Munuvian who wants to have spam control and Blacklisting handled for them can simply go to that blog to see instructions for how to add SpamControl to the list of authors on their own site, thereby giving SpamControl the ability to monitor, Blacklist, and clean spam from their site. They can also post comments there alerting SpamControl to unusual spam problems on their site, so volunteers can find and deal with them quickly.
(Pixy, I realise you've been doing this sort of thing already, but it's gotta be a Herculean task, & I think it's time you got some help.)
In addition, this blog would be a place for Munuvians to go to request that an authorised server administrator (probable just Pixy and 1 or 2 designates) use MTClose-2 to close (or open) old comments/trackbacks on their blog after an individually specified number of days.**
Lastly, Pixy, could you install this Close Comments plugin? It would provide those who are comfortable editing their templates the ability to close old comments themselves for just their blog by inserting a new tag specifying their preferences.
The end result:
Munuvians who are able to help would be able to do so efficiently.
Munuvians who are experienced in MT can continue to take care of themselves, but with an additional tool.
Feedback/improvements/additions please?
* By having only one author for SpamControl, blogs using the service wouldn't be cluttered with author names for each of the volunteers.
** Controlled simply by uploading the plugin when changes are required, then deleting it afterwards (since leaving it in place would cause the vulnerability Pixy has mentioned previously).
The state of Virginia has these summer programs they call "Governor’s School". A kid gets in by being nominated, writing an essay, being chosen by the school, then the county, and then the state. Out of every other sophomore and junior in the state. There are several programs including: acting, humanities, art, foreign language, science and math, technology, and agriculture. Well I want into humanities. They only take 115 of us (its more then any other program) and I made it past the school level, but my essay isn't that... great. Its good and would get me an A in my English class, but that’s cause it's written in the IB format, and well, they want something "punchier". I'm not sure what they mean, so I offer to your expertise and experience. Any help is welcome, so c'mon and pull out the red pen and get to work. Just remember it has to be 500 words (I can stretch it by about 25 though) and at the moment it's exactly 498. Essay in the extended entry.
Prompt: Henry Mencken a popular 20th century columnist once said that "For every human problem there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." In an essay, 300-500 words long, argue for its merit, inadequacy or inadequacy. If you disagree for with Mencken provide your own maxim.
Henry Mencken, a popular newspaper columnist, once said “For every human problem there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong.” This maxim is proved by the need for alternatives to the use of fossil fuels. A great number of ecologically minded groups have demanded the increased usage of alternative energy sources. Among their suggestions are the use of windmills, watermills and hydroelectric power. These alternatives appear to be an easy answer, but unfortunately it is not as simple as it seems.
In Norway, the government commissioned an experimental underwater “windmill like” project. These watermills use the ocean tides to rotate its blades. The $11 million undertaking only produced 700,000 kilowatt hours of pure, clean, energy. In practical terms, this means the watermills could only provide power to approximately 35 homes a year. The cost of this energy source far outweighs its benefits.
Traditional windmills have their own set of problems. First and foremost, wind is not always a constant, nor is it predictable. The more serious downfall of using windmills, are the major ecological problems their use creates. It’s been discovered that windmills have a tremendous effect on the local weather patterns and bird life. In Oklahoma, a wind farm was built with 10,000 turbines. After only a few months, there was a noticed change in the area’s weather patterns. The turbines actually altered air currents, resulting in drought conditions for farms located downwind. In addition, windmills are placed in the middle of bird migration patterns because of the optimal wind currents. This disturbance of natural migratory patterns seems to have caused as much as a 60% decline in bird population. Darwin may have believed in survival of the fittest; but its doubtful he took 50-meter long, spinning blades into consideration when stating his theory.
Another source of alternative energy to be considered is hydroelectricity. A major drawback of hydroelectric power is that it requires the building of massive dams. While dams serve the dual purpose of harvesting energy and controlling water flow, their usage also has many destructive properties. Once
built, the structures are only viable for 100 years of use. Normal decay and natural disasters could result in floods, causing the death of thousands. Valuable farmland is often lost when it becomes submerged in the dam’s newly created lakes and reservoirs. Furthermore, dams alter the surrounding land and water
areas which causes the destruction of natural animal habitats. It’s been discovered that hydroelectric power contributes to the death and extinction of both land animals and water life.
While using fossil fuels has it’s own set of problems, for now it seems to be the most reliable source available. The proposed alternatives are just not up to the task. Henry Mencken was correct, every human problem does have a simple solution, however one man’s solution is almost always the wrong answer for someone else. The closest humanity may come to a viable solution is through a compromise, using various methods, but within reasonable limits.
In my tireless, neverending quest to prove just how dangerous a little bit of knowledge can be, I've gone and cocked up my site. My original intent was to copy the Sqaush default template. Instad, in my efforts, I seem to have created an abomination.
So the question is, can I either retrace my steps, or how can I move forward. Or, put more simply, how can I best undo the damage I've wrought?
I see that it pays to pay attention to what version one is using. Now I have only minor wrenching to do. Suggestions still appreciated.
Happy Holidays!!
The crap-flooding got so bad today that in the end I was forced to reboot the machine so that I could regain control of it and install my new filter. That at least seems to have been successful.
I have installed a new plugin, Close Comments, as recommended by Paul. It's pretty easy to use, for example, if you include
<MTCloseComments old="21">at the top of your main index template, it will automatically close any comments over 21 days old every time you rebuild.
This is only for MT 2.6 users; for people on MT 3, MT Blacklist performs a similar function automatically.
From Read My Lips courtesy of Tig and Moona: Happy Moo Year
Due to the unceasing and indeed accelerating crapflooding, I've disabled comments just for the moment. Within the next couple of hours, they'll be back with a new hand-coded crap filter.
Right now, though, I'm late for work.
Update: Done! We'll see how it goes.
When I try to update awstats I get the following error:
Error: Plugin load for plugin 'geoipfree' failed with return code: Error: Can't locate Geo/IPfree.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0 . ./lib ./plugins ./plugins) at (eval 1) line 1.
Setup ('/home/david/tmp/awstats/awstats.rishon-rishon.com.conf' file, web server or permissions) may be wrong.
Check config file, permissions and AWStats documentation (in 'docs' directory).
Excuse me if this is an ignorant question and it's been put out already, but how would a Munuvian go about setting up Outlook or Thunderbird for munu-e-mail access (i.e. incoming mail server, user name, yada yada)?
Webmail just reminds me so much of the days when I thought Hotmail address were cool.
Ok, here is the situation. I was included as a source for Google News for exactly 12 hours almost two months ago. For some odd reason, all of Munuviana was added along with me. Since that time I've been trying to find why my site was dropped.
I'm on vacation, but was able to check my e-mail for the first time in a week and got this from Google News:
Hi Rusty,Any way to fix this so that each of my post headings are also hyperlinked to the permalink??Thank you for following up with us. After some investigation, we've found that our system cannot crawl some of your articles because your site's article headlines don't hyperlink to a page dedicated solely to that article. In order for our crawler to correctly gather articles, each article headline needs hyperlink to the article page.
Like I said, I'm on vacation in LA for the next week or so but might find some time to fix this. If you can e-mail me at mypetjawa@gmail.com if you know how I'd appreciate it.
I'm being bombarded by a crapflooder. Any way to just turn off all commenting on posts over a couple weeks old? Some script or something?
This shit is really putting me off my oats.
Am I the only one who got mega-spammed comments this morning?
It sounds like someone got a new computer for Christmas and figured they'd act a complete damn fool with it.
At the request and suggestion of other Munuvians I have transplanted this post from my own site:
Many of you may remember my Letters To The Troops campaign.
I had the opportunity to ensure that the letters I received were personally hand carried to the troops in Iraq.
In the end more than 30 bloggers participated and more than 320 letters were received.
I know we can do better.
The opportunity has presented itself once again and I am all over it! A close personal friend of mine is on his way to Iraq. He is a frequent reader of my site so this effort will not be a surprise like it was during the first campaign. He saw what we accomplished before and has challenged me to do it again. He is eager to be able to deliver hundreds of letters of support to the troops on the ground!
He is willing to hand carry any letters that I can generate and print to Tallil, Iraq and he will make every effort to forward them on from there.
So here is what we need to do. Bloggers, I urge each and every one of you to write your own letter to the troops overseas. Make it a general open letter to any Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine. Keep in mind that the people reading this letters will be both male and female of all ages, ethnic origins and religions. Once your letter is posted, please trackback to this post so that I may find and print your letter. Please direct your readers to this effort as well. Non-bloggers, please leave your open letter of support in the comment section of this post on my site. While it is possible for you to email me your letters, I'd like to see them in the comments so that troops overseas can access and read them online.
Our deadline for this endeavor will be the 17th of December. That will give me the time necessary to print all of the letters and have them ready to go. I will also be printing a sheet with the URL's of all bloggers who participate.
Please forward the link to this post to as many people as you can, both Bloggers and non-bloggers.
Once again, please make your way to the full post at my site to leave your comments, links or TrackBacks.
Let's make this huge.
SlagleRock Out!
My sister, goes to Penn State University, got really railroaded by an academic review board. Here's the full story
What do you think she can do. It seems from past history the university protects it's chosen favorites, often at the expense of students.
Does anyone have experience in importing entries into Moveable Type? I've managed to export our old Typepad entries (all four hundred or so), and though I've followed the MT manual instructions listed here, I guess I'm not uploading them into the right directory or something. It says to upload them into the same directory that MT was installed in, and I do suppose I'm clueless. Anyone else done this before?
Hey, Pixy;
Here's the other half of Jay Allen's recent efforts on the comment spam front.
I have made some editorial adjustments to this post after Jay Allen - the author of MT Blacklist - showed up in the comments and corrected me on some points. Thanks Jay.
I mentioned in a comment to Helen's post about MT Blacklist that I couldn't see just what Blacklist was up to because I could no longer view the Activity Log. And the reason for that is that there were over 500,000 entries in the log, which is kept in a SQL table.*
So I dumped the table and cleared it out and restarted everything and found that it looked something like this:
Badness. The apparent gaps in that trail of tears do not represent a pause in the incoming spam but rather my attempts to reconfigure the comments script to block it entirely. This is necessary because even when MT Blacklist blocks a comment, it still uses a lot of resources on the server, and when you're getting flooded with crap, the server basically grinds to a halt. Each comment requires an Apache process, a Perl process and a MySQL database process, and the system was processing 30-40 comments at the same time.
[Jay Allen, the author of MT Blacklist, has questioned me on this in the comments. I should explain that the problem the server suffered today was not a question of CPU utilisation but of memory - with 30 comments being handled at the same time, the system did not have enough memory to cope, and was constantly swapping tasks to and from disk, a condition known as "thrashing". This is a bad thing.]
For those who speak Linux, the load average was up around 70 during all of this. Which made it less than perfectly responsive when I was logged in and trying to fix it.
The point where the spam stops dead is where I got smart and simply added a .htaccess file that completely blocks access to the CGI directory for that particular spammer.
Meanwhile, Movable Type have provided a fix this problem - with the release of MT 3.14. Which means I really need to get moving on the migration.
* This is a pretty silly place to keep a log file, but what the heck.
I just tried to comment on a mu.nu post and got this:
Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: se.com
Right. Cause se.com is really dangerous. I was trying to write "Close comments" but it wouldn't accept it.
Can somone remove this from the blacklist?
I hate blacklist.
I found this article from a link on Instapundit. The article is here at Netcraft but I'm going to quote the whole thing in the extended entry since it applies to us.
There may be hope
Comment spam attacks on Movable Type weblogs are straining servers at web hosting companies, leading some providers to disable comments on the popular blogging tool. The issues are caused by bugs in MT, forcing publisher Six Apart to recommend configuration changes while it prepares fixes.
The server load issues have affected “a number of web hosts,” according to Six Apart's Jay Allen, and are “especially evident in shared hosting environments.” Allen said the problems are tied to two bugs that cause Movable Type to rebuild posts even when no pages are being changed, allowing comment spam attacks to tie up server resources. Six Apart is promising a fix within 48 hours.
Comment spam, also known as link spam, is believed to boost a site's ranking in Google, which uses inbound links as a measure of a site's popularity. Spammers are using automated scripts to bombard weblogs with comments that include links to sites offering prescription drugs or porn. While weblogs on all platforms have been affected, Movable Type and its mt-comments.cgi script have become a particular target.
“Over the past two weeks, five hosts have in some way disabled MT or MT comments because of the server load they were creating,” writes MT blogger Reid Stott. “Not five little Mom & Pop hosts - at least three of them I’d consider serious to top-notch hosts.” Other bloggers also reported web hosts disabling MT scripts. One said their host, XO Communications, disabled MT after seeing 100 active connections to mt-comments.cgi, suspecting a denial of service attack was underway.
In shared hosting, dozens and even hundreds of sites can share the same web server, meaning that overactive scripts on a single site can impact many other customers. As a result, hosts will disable resource-hogging scripts, usually by changing their permissions so they can't be executed. Repeated problems can prompt a hosting company to ban a script or application from its servers. Movable Type users fear continuing comment spam problems could prompt such a “death sentence” from more hosts.
Six Apart, which also operates the TypePad blog hosting service, says it is working with web hosts on a resolution. “We have learned a lot from running TypePad, and we're working on a way to share that information out with the hosting community at large,” says Anil Dash of Six Apart.
While they await a fix, some bloggers are collecting tips and strategies to help reduce comment spam and server load. Six Apart says it is determined to fix the software, and develop broader solutions to the comment spam problem. “There is no higher priority to us than making sure that our customers and their websites are protected from the effects of these malicious attacks,” said Allen.
Want something that can both speed up your page load time and cut down on bandwidth, thus preventing another potential meltdown? Then I'm here to help. Well, not me. But try this...and once you've rebuilt you can test it here.
In geek talk:
Anyone with a recent version of PHP (4.1+) running on their server can easily take advantage of this. Benefits are greatly reduced bandwidth consumption and a much speedier site, especially for readers using modems.It does have to be the very first line; but it works - I've just done it on mine and it validated.Simply place the following snippet at the very first line of PHP-aware web pages, before :
<?php ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); ?>
And that’s it.
Is it permissible for me to go over to my old Clogspot Blog and steal my old template? Is it proprietary? How do I break it down into nice little CSS-size chunks and whatnot.
Thoughts??
Impressions??
Bacon??
Protomonkey is reborn!
Protomonkey was my attempt to goad myself into writing more and better. Being the stubborn SOB that I am, I was unable to do so and the site languished. It has now risen like the monkey from the flames, changed into a new and stronger site.
What, you might ask me, is this wonderful new concept? Well, I say to you, it is now a group blog. It will be a collective home for any creative writing. Short stories, anecdotes, essays, you name it, it's welcome. For a more complete (and dare I say humorous) introduction see the FAQ.
Joining is simple. Just comment in the FAQ thread or send me an email and mention that you'd like to be a contributor. If you don't have my email address you can get it from the sidebar here or just contact your friendly neighborhood spammer. Apparently they've all got it.
So what are you waiting for? Get over there and look around. My short stories are posted over there and there's already a second protomonkey churning out goods for you.
Mmkay, our good friends at pMachine didn't bother to work an import/export feature into their software (under premise that "your host should have phpMyAdmin installed on it.").
Fortunately, mine does and it appears that's going to be the only way I can export the rest of my old entries, meme-garbage some of them may be.
Can some savvy person tell me in what form ("SQL", "LaTex", "CSV for Ms Excel data", "CSV data", or "XML") I should export it?........and then what do do with it after that?
Please and thank you?
I would like to add an alternate view of my monthly archives which will display all comments. Creating the template is not a problem, but:
1. How do I tell MT that it is a monthly archive?
2. How do name the files (e.g. .../archives/include_comments_2004_12.php)?
3. Is there any way that I can do this without adding additional maintenance (e.g. by checking a query parameter, so I can use the same templace for both)?
I decided it was time for a redesign.
Take a look
I'm getting funky smilies instead of my quiz pic! Pixy can you help me?
What did I do wrong? It comes out right on the preview, but then I go to the site and it is all wrong.
thanks in advance.
OK. I have completed the majority of my site make-over -- so what do ya'll think 'bout it? It is mean, lean and puts the content right up on top. Uh, Jim, I would like to know how to get those link list openers like you have on Snooze Button Dreams. Any chance ya can share a bit of the magic behind that trick with me? Read My Lips. Jes' have a look and let me know if ya like what ya see?
The pop-up commenting at my site just took a dive. I get this message:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /cgi/splorp.cgi on this server.
What's the deal?
We already know he's amazing, but the rest of the blogosphere has finally taken note. Pixy's Ambient Irony has blasted all the way up to #3 on TTLB's Ecosystem, ranking just behind Daily Kos and ahead of Little Green Footballs!
Geez, if that's what upgrading to MT 3 does for ya... we should all get our requests in poste-haste. Line forms right here behind me.
Enjoy it while it lasts, oh Great One.
With Pixy adding the cool new "Another Mu.nu blog" logo to his front page (and I'll be soon to follow), I wanted to note this other idea I've had about the Mu.nu community and promotion.
Is it posible to get a sort of automated "Latest headlines" thing featuring all of the Munu blogs? Something like the Headline Animator provided byFeedburner. We could all put in on our frontpages and get the word out about all the other awesome blogs in our community. Anyway, it'd be nice...
P.S. Is it me or does Safari hate these helpful "URL" and "B" buttons on the post entry page?
I've upgraded my blog to MT3. It seems to work. I still have to pound on the templates a bit, but when is that not the case?
The only thing it doesn't do (yet) is update the "New on MuNu" list here. I'll fix that soon.
If anyone else is interested in upgrading, just say the word.*
* "Retromingent".
Anyone know where I can find some really simple two and three column templates, with basic color schemes, not graphically intensive?
OK, I finally figured it out. All I really needed to do was delete the banner div out of the template to do what I wanted. I am doin' my testin' on Beyond the Black Hole, since that blog is kinda dead for right now. Check it out and let me know what ya think. All the stuff in the column will be changed eventually.
For those two or three of us who still like to manually keep our munu blogroll updated, here are the 10 most recent conquered converted Munuvians:
The Lyrics of Life in LA
Wolfgang von Skeptik
King of the Blogs!
Delftsman
Boudicca's Voice
Inblognito
Cake Eater Chronicles
Bloviating Inanities
Winter Songs
Blown Fuse
Update yer blogroll, pay a welcoming visit, and smile at my Christmas cap!
:)
The 2004 Weblog Awards polls are open and many Munuvians (and Munuviana itself) are finalists in the polls. You can vote in each poll once per day. The following list contains the Munu blogs that made the final cut. The CAPITALIZED AND ITALICIZED lines are links to the individual poll and those are followed by links to the Munu blog(s) in that contest.
Note: It's possible that I've missed a couple. I parsed for websites at "mu.nu". If there are Munus in the polls that I overlooked because they have their own domains please comment here and I'll update the list.
BEST CONSERVATIVE BLOG
Ramblings Journal
BEST CULTURE BLOG
Llama Butchers
BEST ONLINE COMMUNITY
Munuviana
BEST BLOG DESIGN
Little Miss Attila
BEST ESSAYIST
Wolfgang von Skeptik
BEST CANADIAN BLOG
Being American in T.O.
BEST AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALAND BLOG
Ambient Irony
DramaQueen
BEST OF THE TOP 100 BLOGS
Ace of Spades HQ
BEST OF THE TOP 100 - 250 BLOGS
Bad Example
Patriot Paradox
BEST OF THE TOP 250 - 500 BLOGS
Physics Geek
BEST OF THE TOP 500 - 1000 BLOGS
Brain Fertilizer
The Flying Space Monkey
Snooze Button Dreams
BEST OF THE TOP 1000 - 1750 BLOGS
Everyday Stranger
BEST OF THE TOP 1750 - 2500 BLOGS
Anticipatory Retaliation
Ravings of a Corporate Mommy
BEST OF THE TOP 5000 - 6750 BLOGS
Ilyka Damen
(PS - Do yourself a favor. While you're there voting take a look at some new blogs. These are some of the best out there.)
Now on King of the Blogs: The KOTB Odds Contest!
The details:
They are competing for the crown. You can predict who will win.Each week you can get odds on the latest King of the Blog tournament. If you are closest to the results you get a free ad here for the next tournament. To do so just fill out the form to the right, and send it our way. Remember the most any one blog can score is 51. With the results we need the final roster from one to 3 and your prediction of the final scores. Good Luck.
Current Contestants:
I Hate My Cubicle
illogicology
View From the PewBe sure to include all contestants in your odds. Have an ad ready in case you win!
Also all Munuvians are invited to compete in King of the Blogs, so go by and sign up!
I'm trying to show several images across the screen rather than as a single file column down the screen. I have 3 images that I'd like to butt up against each other(they fit) across the blog post. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to function properly. The "< img src= >" codes are all sequential and contiguous, and they are embedded within "< p" " / p>" codes. Any suggestions? I've even tried copying/pasting the HTML created using a WYSIWYG editor, but to no avail.
I'm trying to get people to believe again. I want peope to have hope and faith in Santa. So if you could help raise the roof on this, I'd appreciate it. I'm not trying to idly plug my site, I just know that a lot of people are down this year about the holidays.
My entry is this:
http://everydaystranger.mu.nu/archives/058373.php
I have a cute graphic I hope people can add to their sites, only I am crap at creating a code and listing it on my site so that other people can just copy and paste into their sidebar, so if anyone can help there too, that would be appreciated.
And if you can help and help me create a code the people can just cut and paste based on this picture, then just leave it in the comments, as I can't access my email today. It would be great it the picture, when clicked, would link to my blog post about trying to believe in Santa, but if it can't it's no biggie. I just want to bring Santa back, that's all.
Thanks.
Helen
I tried out Expression Engine for my blog for a couple of days, and ran into some problems that would pretty much prevent us using it. I asked about it on the PMachine forums, and, along with some helpful advice, they pointed out that the license terms say that you can't use it to run a blogging service, and that mu.nu looks a lot like a blogging service.
So scratch EE. I'm taking another look at Minx right now.
So, was I the only one that could not seem to get into munu so as to post somethin' new here over this last hour or so? I lost a really long link laden post which lagged so long on the send out, I thought the program was locked and ended it. I didn't know that our server picked that very moment to start actin' up. Sheesh, and I worked several hours on that post, but deleted all the links, one by one, as I completed my composition of each section. Don't ya jes' hate that?
This is for the Physics Geek, whose comments seem to be broken, and whose blog doesn't contain an email address.
To make your ASCII text items display correctly, try using the "code" tags (i.e., <code>, </code>) before and after the segments you want to be fixed-width. There might be a more elegant (or HTML-valid) solution, but this is the one that comes quickly to mind.
Hope it works!
P.S. Please consider putting an email address on your main page (use an image if you want to avoid spam bots).
I've attempted to post several ASCII text items on my blog, but I'm having trouble with the spacing. For example:
*::space::::space::::space::*
displays as this:
**
My assumption is that there is some setting in my style sheet that I need to adjust to allow me to type in text without having blank spaces ignored. Anyone know the cure? Thanks in advance.
I've jumped ship for Expression Engine.
Actually, this is just an excuse to ping myself and see what happens.
Update: Nothing! Absolutely nothing! So stupid!
Update: Manual ping works. Of course, it doesn't show up, because I have template caching turned on, because if I don't have template caching on it's appallingly slow, so I have to clear the cache just to see my trackback. Bah.
Update: Don't mind me.
Update: I'm not even here.
Update: Bingo! The RDF data disagreed with the permalink in the default template. You'd think someone would have noticed that by now.
Something wrong with the server? I keep getting "File 404-Forbidden Access" when I try to open my own comments.
I know I can get racy, but surely not that racy.
Not sure if you might have already seen this, Pixy, but since you're working with MT3 and the new Blacklist on the new server, there's a serious (albeit intermittent) bug in Blacklist that causes unexpected deletion of blogs. Jay Allen's working on a fix which may even be out today, but didn't want you to get bit in the meantime.
Paul
Okay, I've come up with a much better way to handle our munu blogroll, one that will allow us to keep a single database of munu blogs and produce it in multiple styles automagically. And that will also allow the people who have foolishly generously offered to help out to do so in a managed fashion.
I've set up a blog. It's called Blogroll. The idea is that each munu blog is marked by a single post, with the title being the blog's name, the excerpt being the URL, the body being availble for a little description of the blog, and the categories marking the blog's status (and perhaps what sort of blog it is). The date of the post will be (as near as we can) the date that blog came to munu.
From that we can automatically produce php includes and javascript files, sorted any which way, including or excluding various types of blogs, and so on. I'll start making the entries, and I'll grant access to people who want to help.
And yes, it's a simple one. I muddle through whenever I change my Style Sheet. This time is no exception. Somehow, I've set my banner font color to the same as the background: #FFFFFF. I can't seem to figure out which font color or other color to change to make my banner title show up. The sub-header displays just fine, but Physics Geek isn't visible. It does show up when you highlight the text at the top.
I've finally made most of the changes I wanted and I didn't want to really mess up the style sheet by altering the wrong color. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I've been slack about getting new moos set up these last couple of months, but I'm back in gear now, so if you have a nomination hop on over to Ellis Island and get nominating!
Munuviana is not doin' well. Time to get ever' one of your friends, relatives, enemies, and ever' stranger with up you can catch and get 'em online and votin' for Munuviana, either that, or someone submit somethin' to FARK 'bout how world peace will be established if those millions of FARKers voted for Munuviana. Naw, that claim that wouldn't motivate those mindless minions - it ain't got no boobies, stupidity, asininity, or anythin' else on the same level with slapstick comedy or my own personally composed prose.
i couldn't post a comment to Munuviana because i got this message:
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:What gives?Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: .online.com
Please correct the error in the form below, then press Post to post your comment.
Also, i just converted to Firefox and i noticed that there's a bug in Mozilla for the html non-breaking space code [& nbsp ;]. sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Does anyone know an alternative code, because i just love using the non-breaking space code.
Oh, and GO MU.NU!
Thought I come over really quick and let everyone know that I just received the most brutal comment spam attack ever: it looks like this 'bot basically left one link-filled comment on every single entry I've written--going back at least a few weeks, and maybe stretching back to last March, when I started on Mu.Nu. I'm on the run today, so I just deleted as far back as I could for now.
I'd be happy to handle the blacklisting, if someone has explicit instructions on how to do it correctly. In the meantime, as a warning (and in case one of you experts want to jump on it), here is the info:
Postings appear to be in pidgin Dutch, but they are chock-full of links to various small-time money-making ventures.
"Name" = Grizzlie
"address' = stef@lyma.org
IP = 65.172.171.240
Please be warned, and let me know if you have any advice, or blacklisting instructions.
Thanks!
