VaxCave

I have no idea why an error would appear regarding a cpp file. Does Dreamweaver compile new versions of itself everytime it’s launched? That may explain why it’s so slow.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 9:58 am under General, Web Design
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After working on setting up a blog using WordPress 1.5 for Cindy, I figured that I would try and upgrade my setup to the same. Everything went fine obviously. It has allowed me to abandon my homebrew captcha system and use a plugin that requires no user interaction for commenting. I’ve also setup a blocker for trackback and referrer spam as well. Since I maintain 4 or 5 blog installations and the upgrade is easy I’ll most likely start moving everyone that way fairly soon. So look for it soon!

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Filed by AxsDeny at 6:51 pm under General, Web Design
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I’ve been getting hammered with trackback spam. I have my blacklist setup to weed out anything that comes from our good friends, the “texas hold em / online poker” folks. However, this just puts the trackback spam into the moderation queue. That means I have to clean it out ever so often. I’m lazy, so that rarely happens. To get around this, I wrote a modification to the WordPress wp-trackback.php file to search for these spammers and nix their attempts at making me do work.

I created a new file called ‘wp-trackback_spamkiller.php’ that contained the following code. You can add whatever words you would like to be blacklisted in the $blacklist array.

<?
function trackbackSpamKiller($message){
    # add to this to get rid of trackback spam containing these words
    $blacklist = array(
        'online casino',
        'texas hold',
        'texashold',
        'online poker',
        'virtual strip poker'
    );
    
    foreach($blacklist as $key=> $val){
        # if it's in there... kill the attempt
        if(strstr($message,$val)){  
            die("Please don't spam me.");
        }
    }
}
?>

After you have created that file and uploaded it to the same folder as your ‘wp-trackback.php’ file you will need to make a call to the function in the ‘wp-trackback.php’ file. Download the ‘wp-trackback.php’ file and find the line that reads:

require(dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-config.php');

Directly under that line, insert the following line:

require('wp-trackback_spamkiller.php');

This will allow the trackback file to call the function that we created earlier. Now you need to actually call the function so that the test can be performed. Find the line in your ‘wp-trackback.php’ file that reads:

$blog_name = $_POST['blog_name'];

Immediately after that line, paste these lines:

trackbackSpamKiller($title);
trackbackSpamKiller($blog_name);
trackbackSpamKiller($excerpt);

Now, save the ‘wp-trackback.php’ file and upload it to the server. Your trackback spam should no longer appear in the moderation queue. I’ll probably refine this in the future but for now, it works. Of course, caveat emptor.

UPDATE: I changed the formatting a little and made some changes to the blacklist array. I’m looking into allowing the blacklist array to be pulled from the moderation queue list. That way you can use the same blacklist rather than maintaining two lists. –Axs (3:15pm 2005-02-23)

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Filed by AxsDeny at 4:02 pm under General, Web Design
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I made a little Captcha system for commenting. Nothing too elaborate right now, but it will work for the time being. Feel free to comment as you wish!

"Because It's Midnite" by Limozeen on Strong Bad Sings and other type hits
Filed by AxsDeny at 10:11 pm under General, Web Design
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It turns out that the authimage hack for WordPress requires the GD Library and Freetype Library installations to create the dynamic image. I may just come up with a simpler solution for this than doing all kinds of modifications to the server. It would certainly be useful to have those installations anyway, but I think creating a hack for WP on my own would be an interesting project.

"House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals on The Best Of
Filed by AxsDeny at 8:36 am under General, Web Design
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