March 31, 2005

Ellis Island is open for business

The great and mighty Pixy Misa has set me up with the tools necessary to help get new Munuvians started up. I've gone through the Ellis Island queue line to enlist the help of each immigrant's sponsor in verifying that they still want to be Munuvians (some of the nominations are pretty old) and in getting the basic info needed to set up the new blogs.

I encourage all Munuvians to keep an eye on Ellis Island. If there are no negative votes after a week (or so) the nominee will become a Munu as soon as Pixy puts in his "Yay". If you've got a concern over a prospective neighbor you need to speak up. Likewise, if you approve of a nominee blog your vote of support is very...um...supportive. Ellis Island is our vetting process and it will only work well with participation from the Mucommunity.

I'd also encourage all Munuvians to nominate worthy blogs. We need to attract the cream of the crop* in order to finish taking over the world. When you do nominate somebody please get a few bits of basic info and include it in the nomination post.

  • Firstly, check with the person and make sure that they want to move their blog to Munuviana. Do this before nominating them.
  • Secondly, specify a contact email address.
  • Thirdly, the new user account and blogname will be set up with whatever is listed in the nomination. If they want something different please specify. If it's a multi-person blog make sure to list all of the participants.
  • Lastly, if they have their own url that will be used for the blog let me know what it is.

* Okay, what the hell does this saying actually mean? What sort of "crop" gives cream? Are we harvesting cows here? I should probably ask Jen.

Posted by Jim at 03:10 PM | Comments (9)

The Nuclear Option

Is anyone here familiar with Nucleus? It supports multiple blogs and authors, has a nice set of plugins, and it's free. (Free as in open source as well as free as in no money.) It's the first open-source blogging package I've seen that supports multiple blogs well.

I'm going to give it a whirl for a few days; it's available under Fantastico so it's just a couple of mouses away. We'll see how it goes.

Hopefully better than Expression Engine, which is a cow for running multiple blogs.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 03:48 AM | Comments (2)

March 30, 2005

Trackback Spam

I'm being deluged with trackback spam. The IP Deny Manager doesn' t block it (IP: 210.117.67.217). Is there anything I can do besides delete them one by one?

Posted by David Boxenhorn at 03:14 PM | Comments (5)

March 28, 2005

Comment Error

I have a regular commentor who can't comment on my site without receiving an error message. I have checked to make sure that I didn't inadvertently ban her IP.

What to do?

Posted by Rae at 06:14 PM | Comments (3)

New Blog Showcase

The latest edition is up at Rocket Jones.

Posted by Ted at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2005

How did I manage to do this?

Okay... I tweaked my template just a tad. Nothing beyond centering a couple things and resizing a font. No big deal right? Well, somehow I've screwed up my calendar. Now, my snazzy March 2005 calendar shows I've only posted on the 13th and 21st, and when you click those dates, it sends you to Roxette Bunny's place.

Whahappen?

Update Ummm... nevermind. It seems to be fixed now. Wierd.

Posted by Frinklin at 05:44 AM | Comments (1)

March 23, 2005

Trackback / Comment Spam

Is it just me, or does most of the comment/trackback spam come from old archived posts. I know a number of sites that close comments and trackbacks after a certain period of time--say, one or two weeks. I'm pretty sure there is a script for this. Wouldn't a quick and easy solution be to institute a no comments/trackbacks allowed policy after a post is a couple of weeks old?

Posted by Rusty at 07:58 PM | Comments (4)

March 22, 2005

MuNu Material?

I know, I know, I've been gone for a really long time, and then I resurface to ask if you guys think Ethne is MuNu material?

{long pause}

Well? Whaddaya think?

Posted by Linda at 06:24 PM | Comments (1)

Don't Mind This Harmless Gnome...

From NickQueen.com and sorta via Bad Example:

Now I am going to spread the joy. Remember the people that stole a lawn gnome, traveled the world and sent pictures back? Well, I want you to take this gnome and send trackbacks back to me (the post is http://www.nickqueen.com/archives/072339.php ) and Chuck. Do that and I'll link to your blog here, a sorta GnomeRoll.

Be sure to try to get people to take the gnome to their own blog.

Have at it! Here is Chuck's info:

Blog name: Class Mishaps
Post URL: http://classmishaps.f2o.org/chuckblog/pivot/entry.php?id=109

Posted by Nick Queen at 04:43 AM | Comments (0)

New Blog Showcase

Jim's done a great job with The New Weblog Showcase. Please check it out and spread the word. If you're interested in hosting drop me a line or visit the Showcase website.

Posted by Simon at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005

This Means War

We're getting hit with 10 trackback spams per second right now. I've tightened up the watchdog script so that it's checking for spam every ten seconds. I hope that will keep things under control.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 06:54 AM | Comments (2)

March 16, 2005

Ellis Island Arrival

I have posted a new arrival over at Ellis Island. The blog name is American Warmonger, and I feel most would agree he is Munu material. He is a Navy brat, War on Terror vet, and excellent Blogger. He is starting a blog design business with Ogre of Ogre's Politics and Views, and has just won 3 consecutive times at King of the Blogs. I hope you'll take a look and give a big yay!

Posted by Nick Queen at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)

Collinization

Might possibly come back, but as he claimed "cuz i forgot my password, mofo". So on his behalf (and its hilarious when he bugs my dad for my #), Pixy, can you send him his password? ^^

Posted by Mookie at 12:59 AM | Comments (7)

March 15, 2005

Blacklist error

Pixy, I'm getting this error when I do a Blacklist spam removal:

Entry rebuild: FAILED - Writing to '/home/pixymisa/www/old/Archives/blog/this_is_my_blog.i.new' failed: Opening local file '/home/pixymisa/www/old/Archives/blog/this_is_my_blog.i.new' failed: Permission denied

It looks familiar. Have we seen this before?

Posted by Jim at 03:04 PM | Comments (2)

New Blog Carnival

The New Blog Carnival is up at Multiple Mentality, where they're done a great job. Check it out. Next week it's at our own Snooze Button Dreams.

Posted by Simon at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)

Looking For A Few Good Munus

Hi gang.

I'm looking for a few volunteers to help get the Munu ball rolling again, setting up new blogs and all that stuff. I'm just finishing the setup so that other people will be able to create new sites and new blogs and import entries and stuff like that, and once it's done (which should be this week) we'll be all systems go.

You'll need some basic technical knowledge and aptitude, but it's all done through a web interface and there's nothing really hard. (At least, once I finish this one last script.)

Queue forms to the right. :)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:11 AM | Comments (7)

March 12, 2005

Munuvians Of The World Unite!

i urge all Munuvians to read this post by Kevin at Wizbang, regarding our right to Freedom of Speech as bloggers, and to sign the Online Coalition letter to Federal Election Commission chairman Scott E. Thomas.

Posted by annika at 04:47 AM | Comments (4)

March 11, 2005

Nomination

Can we still nominate bloggers to MuNu? I think Joan at Seven Inches of Sense is a fantastic writer.

Posted by Rae at 05:07 PM | Comments (5)

March 08, 2005

Help with a Title

Hm. Have we addressed this?

For some reason, I'm having trouble changing the title of a post, because MT has identified the post as X, and in MT's mind, X it will remain until the end of time.

What I did was use standard title style, except that the word "is" begins with a lower-case i (I was typing too fast; I must have unconsciously thought the word was "in," a preposition that should be lower-cased). So I tried to edit the post, but MT has this mind-block and just won't do it. I even tried rebuilding the whole shooting match. No go.

Any thoughts? It's such an odd little thing to happen.

Posted by Attila at 06:44 PM | Comments (1)

New Blog Showcase

Sadie has raised the bar with the newest edition of the New Blog Showcase Carnival. Go check it out.

Next week is at Josh Cohen's. To submit an entry you can use the central email:

showcase.carnival@gmail.com

If you want to host a future edition, let me know.

Posted by Simon at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Blacklist be full

The Blacklist is full again. I freed up a dozen spots or so and I'll try to find time to blast some more dupes tomorrow.

Posted by Jim at 02:27 AM | Comments (1)

March 05, 2005

Self Defence

Hi everyone.

One of our recurring problems here at MuNu is that when a lot of our blogs get hit with spam at the same time, the server chokes under the load.

I've now implemented a watchdog program. If it sees an unusual number of trackbacks coming in all at once (more than ten; I've seen as many as 150 at once during a spam flood) it will bite their legs off and piddle on the trackback script. After five minutes the trackback script will be unpiddled automatically.

(Fiddle fiddle.)

It now works for comments too. More than 20 comments arriving at once will result in a summary chomping and piddling, with automatic unpiddling after two minutes. I've made more generous allowance for comments since we get more of them and I think it's more important that comments are working than trackbacks.

This won't stop spam, but it should stop spam floods before they can cause any significant problems.

As usual, let me know if you see anything untowards happening. Particularly if it might be related to this change. ;)

Posted by Pixy Misa at 06:26 AM | Comments (6)

March 04, 2005

Technology moves beyond my comprehension

Just exactly what is podcasting?

Posted by Tiger at 04:54 AM | Comments (6)

March 03, 2005

Groomba Groom

On March 3rd 2005 at 12:01am CST The Planet will be performing an emergency fiber re-groom to improve network performance. This will result in intermittent latency fluctuations and minor packet loss for some providers staggered over 1 hour.
So if your fibers were looking a little unkempt, don't worry, it's all being take care of.

And if you find yourself suffering latency fluctuations or minor packet loss, don't head for the aspirin; it's just your fiber being re-groomed.

Posted by Pixy Misa at 12:31 AM | Comments (1)

March 01, 2005

Emailing posts

Another thing: is there an easy way to add a link to each post that enable it to be emailed...I've seen on some sites an "Email this post" button that I'd like to add to all of my posts if possible...

Posted by Simon at 06:26 AM | Comments (2)

Showing posts

Need a bit of help. I'd like to add a section to my sidebar that shows a listing of (say) the 10 most recent posts with a link to each. I know there's an easy way to do this but can't seem to find it...

Posted by Simon at 05:08 AM | Comments (2)

3rd Showcase Carnival is up

The 3rd New Blog Showcase Carnival is up.

Posted by Simon at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)