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+date: "2006-01-23T08:39:11Z"
+title: WordPress En Masse and Akismet
+---
+
+<p>Saturday evening I spent several hours upgrading <a href="http://erinmduncan.com/" title="My sister Erin's web page.">erinmduncan.com</a>,
+<a href="http://saraduncan.com/" title="My sister Sara's web page.">saraduncan.com</a>, <a href="http://richandrobynn.com/" title="My sister Dad and stepmom's web page.">richandrobynn.com</a>, and <a href="http://drotedogg.com/" title="My friend Nick's web page.">drotedogg.com</a> to the
+latest and greatest versions of <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">Wordpress</a> and <a href="http://gallery.sf.net/" title="Web-based photo gallery written in PHP.">Gallery</a>.  The
+upgrades themselves were relatively painless (especially the <a href="http://gallery.sf.net/" title="Web-based photo gallery written in PHP.">Gallery</a>
+one, which I won't even mention here), but I did jot down some
+notes that might be useful to anyone else who has to do this kind of
+upgrade.</p>
+
+<p>Tip #1: Try and stay current with your version of <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress</a>.
+All of the aforementioned pages were running <a
+href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging
+tool.">Wordpress 1.2</a> which, 
+besides being chock-full of vulnerabilities (that were 
+<a href="http://pablotron.org/files/saraduncan.com-owned-20051203/" title="Sara's front page after it was defaced by a Brazillian group.">expoited at least once</a>), doesn't have an
+immediate upgrade path to <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 2.0</a>.  The 
+<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading&#95;WordPress" title="How to upgrade from WordPress 1.5 to WordPress 2.0.">WordPress 2.0 upgrade instructions</a> recommend 
+<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrade&#95;1.2&#95;to&#95;1.5" title="How to upgrade from WordPress 1.2 to WordPress 1.5.">upgrading from WordPress 1.2 to WordPress 1.5</a> before
+upgrading to <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 2.0</a>.  Unfortunately, the
+<a href="http://wordpress.org/download/" title="WordPress download page.">WordPress download page</a> only links to the latest release, and it
+wasn't immediately apparent from the instructions how to obtain a copy
+of <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 1.5</a>.  Fortunately, a bit of digging turned up 
+<a href="http://static.wordpress.org/archive/" title="Every release of WordPress, ever.">this page</a>, which has every release of <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress</a> since
+the dawn of time.  There are at least two other pages indexed by
+<a href="http://google.com/" title="Apparently this is a search engine or something.  Who knew?">Google</a> with <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 1.5.1.3</a> tarballs, but both  have 
+incorrect <acronym title="Message Digest 5 (cryptgraphic digest algorithm)">MD5</acronym> checksums, and at least one had some a code
+change (which, upon inspection, appeared to be a bug fix).  To be safe, 
+I stuck with the version from the <a href="http://static.wordpress.org/archive/" title="Every release of WordPress, ever.">legitimate WordPress archive</a>. </p>
+
+<p>I also switched all of the pages to a much simpler form of comment
+spam filtering.  Previously, the spam filtering was of a
+convoluted combination of a phrase blacklist ("penis", "poker",
+"viagra", etc), hacked in <a href="http://www.gudlyf.com/index.php?p=376" title="CAPTCHA plugin for WordPress 1.2, 1.5, and 2.0.">AuthImage</a> support, and a tweaked
+<code>xmlrpc.php</code>.  In fact, one of the reasons I was hesitant about
+upgrading to <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 1.5</a> was that I wasn't too optimistic about 
+duplicating all that nonsense.  </p>
+
+<p>As of <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 2.0</a>, all that hackery has been replaced by the
+built-in <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress 2.0</a> plugin for <a href="http://akismet.com/" title="Free comment spam filtering system with an open API and a plugin for WordPress.">Akismet</a>.  I haven't tested
+it, I have a feeling it's something blog spammers can circumvent,
+and I don't see how the company can stay afloat providing this as a free
+service.  But hey, I'm lazy.
+<a href="http://akismet.com/" title="Free comment spam filtering system with an open API and a plugin for WordPress.">Akismet</a> requires zero administration, zero
+tweaking, and, most importantly, zero patching, so I'm willing to give it a try and see what happens.  Plus, the <a href="http://akismet.com/development/"><acronym title="Application Programming Interface">API</acronym></a> is
+relatively straightforward, so if there are any hijinks on the their part, then
+it's easy enough to switch to a comparable open system.  There
+are even <a href="http://www.blojsom.com/blog/nerdery/2005/12/02/Akismet-API-in-Ruby.html" title="Ruby bindings for Akimset.">Akismet bindings</a> for <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="No post is complete without a reference to my favorite programming language.">Ruby</a>, although my initial perusal
+of the source code tells me they won't work in <a href="http://linux.com/" title="Penguins, free beer, that sort of thing.">Linux</a> without a bit
+of tweaking (hint: case-sensitive filesystems mean case-sensitive file
+names).  The only real <a href="http://akismet.com/" title="Free comment spam filtering system with an open API and a plugin for WordPress.">Akismet</a> annoyance is that in order to get an
+<acronym title="Application Programming Interface">API</acronym> key, you <em>have</em> to sign up for a <a href="http://wordpress.com/" title="Free blog hosting system running, you guessed it, WordPress.">WordPress.com</a> account.  It's
+free, but it means I have yet another throw-away account, not to mention
+a blog that I'll never update (everyone say hello to
+<a href="http://pablotron.wordpress.com/">http://pablotron.wordpress.com/</a>!).</p>
+
+<p>Overall though, I have to hand it to the <a href="http://wordpress.org/" title="The ever-popular blogging tool.">WordPress</a> developers.  It looks
+like there are a fair number of changes under the hood, and I'm
+impressed by how seamless they made the both of the upgrades.  Or 
+maybe I'm just excited about not spending Sunday afternoons sitting at 
+the <a href="http://mysql.com/" title="Mostly open RDBMS.">MySQL</a> console deleting comment spam any more.  Either way, I'm
+happy.</p>
+