Google Analytics plugin for Ruby on Rails released
posted: December 13th, 2007 · by: Sven
I’ve just released a first version of the Google Analytics plugin for Ruby on Rails that I’ve done in the course of the offer to build custom plugins for Mephisto users.
You can grab the plugin and read more about it here: Ruby on Rails Plugin: Google Analytics (blue egg edition)
Eran Ben Sabat was the first to contact me about this offer and suggested that I could write a Google Analytics plugin which he was interested in.
By now there’s another interesting request by Thilo Thamm who asked for a plugin for allowing users to add blog posts. This sounds like another great idea for a useful plugin and I plan to tackle this one next.
I was totally thrilled how much fun it was to work with both Liz and Eran Ben Sabat on their plugins. So my offer still stands. If you have an idea for a nice plugin, don’t hesitate to drop me a note.
Mephisto Inverse Captcha plugin updated
posted: November 19th, 2007 · by: Sven
Just a short note for those of you who are using my Mephisto Inverse Captcha plugin:
I’ve recieved some feedback that the way the plugin was implemented apperently caused problems in fcgi environments. I’ve simplified the plugin loading quite a bit and now it seems to work fine.
I’ve got it running here on my own blog, too, with Rails 2.0PR and Mephisto rev2983 and it continues to work like a charm :) Actually, I have no spam comments thanks to it.
If you further encounter any problems please let me know :)
Inverse Captcha Anti-Comment-Spam Technique: Now A Regular Mephisto Plugin
posted: September 25th, 2007 · by: Sven
After I had revamped my initial experimental approach to the “Inverse Captcha” anti-spam technique as a regular Mephisto Plugin lately I have promised to explain how you can use it to get rid of your blog comment spam.
This plugin is getting a bunch of additional attention these days, especially after it was linked to in Quarks’ Ruby on Rails Security Guide. So, some additional information is past due. There you go.
Read the rest of this entryReport: 30 days with no blog spam on Mephisto!
posted: May 8th, 2007 · by: Sven
I promised to keep you posted with the results of my experimental ”outer spam floodgate” Mephisto extension. Tell you what. I’m super-happy with the results as I haven’t seen any blog spam this month! Yes, right. No spam.
Read the rest of this entryPatch Mephisto to add a comments list filter
posted: April 4th, 2007 · by: Sven
Mephisto is backed by Akismet when it comes to comment-spam-protection and this duo works pretty well. But like any such system it’s not 100% foolproof and therefor Rick has build it that way that comments are put aside, not completely deleted when Akismet thinks that it’s spam. You’re supposed to log into the admin interface, go to “Moderate comments” and then review them. You can approve or delete the comments separately or delete them all at once.
That’s all pretty reasonable and handy. But when I scrolled through my 900 spam comments yesterday I found myself really wanting to filter the list by keywords like “cialis” or “toyota” (what the heck is so cool about Toyota newly?). This way I could reduce the list by the largest portions in some steps and then only have to review the rest of it.
I looked at the source code and found that it’s pretty super simple to patch in support for this kind of feature. So, here you go.
Read the rest of this entryHow to add a floodgate to Mephisto's nearly perfect spam protection
posted: April 4th, 2007 · by: Sven
Mephisto comes with Akismet support baked right into its heart and it works like a charm. I’ve been totally pleased with it spotting nearly every spam comment and collecting them for later review and bulk deletion.
Now, 30 days later, I found it was time to clean up the spammy comments piles that Mephisto hunted down for me. Actually nearly 900 comments had piled up. Year, that’s 30 per day. I don’t think that’s that much compared to what others receive.
But to me 900 spam comments in 30 days is too much. I don’t want to spend the time to manually check 900 comments even if I’d have to do it only once a month. No way.
I thus revisited an idea that Damien Katz called “negative captcha”. I realized that I’ve actually had experiences with this type of “protection” and they’ve been pretty good.
Read the rest of this entryDoable strategies against blog spam?
posted: May 20th, 2006 · by: Sven
My old Wordpress blog had the option to turn on “moderated comments”. That means that I’ve recieved an email notification about every comment asking me to “please moderate this comment”. The email contained a link to instantly approve and a link to reject the comment.
Sigh. My blog never has been linked to that extensively that I’d expected comment spam to become a problem in the first place. I’ve been wrong. Wordpress seems to allure blog spam like a light bulb flies on a midsummer evening. I recieved some hundred mail notifications per week, asking me to moderate cheap perfumes, pills and online bets (for the world cup, lately). Finally my email spam filter caught up and started to sort out the notifications from my own blog. Hum.
Having switched over to Typo I was curious about Typos anti-spam measurements and came up with some thoughts about possible “joint-forces” strategies against blog spam.
Read the rest of this entry