I finally integrated the anti-spam tool called Akismet into my comments system. Akismet is a third-party app that checks all comments that are submitted and declares them as either spam or not. They use their own methods to run a newly submitted comment through hundreds of tests. If the comment comes back as legitimate then it'll be posted on my site. If it's considered spam, then my site will still save it but mark it as spam so only I can see it. From there I can then go ahead and either delete it, or mark it as non-spam.

In my ongoing effort to stop comment spam from getting through, I've decided to implement IP address blocking and referrer blocking. I never really wanted to block IP's or visitors from certain referrers from accessing my entire site, but decided to build a little script to do so anyways. I guess I should start being a little tougher on these spambots.

Well, in a certain sense anyways. Most of the time they're just pathetic little programs that try their hardest to post Viagra ads on your site. But over the past few years WebNV has seen more and more spammers access this site and try to post their garbage. I hate to say it but some do get through. And since I'm running my own cms, it means a lot more work for me to try and stop them. Luckily I like a challenge.

Damn it.  For the past few days now this site has been getting a lot of spam comments.  I don't know how.  I have the security image/capatcha thing in place and working.  This capatcha tool is used to stop spam robots from posting tons of shit comments on my site for advertising purposes.  It's been working great for the past several months now.

Oh my god, I just got this e-mail:

This is so amazing!!  Now all I have to do is claim my winnings then I can say so long to all you poor losers!  Haha!  I am rich and so rich that I'm now flipping off my boss while I drop kick his monitor across the room!!  Yes, it was kind of hard to do all that at the same time, and yes, my foot now hurts.  But who cares!!  I'm rich, weathy, financially stable!  I'll buy a new foot and pay to get new friends too.  I rightfully won this lottery that I...somehow...randomly was entered into...

The comments system is back up and running again on this site. For the past several days I've been fighting spam showing up in the comments area.

It's these damn bots that crawl or surf the site and post 'fake' comments that do nothing more than spam it up with advertisments. I freakin' hate it. It got so bad that every few minutes I would have to go in and delete four or five new entries. I finally disabled the comments until I could figure out what to do to stop the spam.