From 4b6c0e31385f5f27a151088c0a2b614495c4e589 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Paul Duncan Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2021 12:47:50 -0400 Subject: initial commit, including theme --- .../2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html | 66 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 66 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/posts/2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html (limited to 'content/posts/2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html') diff --git a/content/posts/2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html b/content/posts/2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..69b7a60 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2006-01-23-wordpress-en-masse-and-akismet.html @@ -0,0 +1,66 @@ +--- +date: "2006-01-23T08:39:11Z" +title: WordPress En Masse and Akismet +--- + +

Saturday evening I spent several hours upgrading erinmduncan.com, +saraduncan.com, richandrobynn.com, and drotedogg.com to the +latest and greatest versions of Wordpress and Gallery. The +upgrades themselves were relatively painless (especially the Gallery +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.

+ +

Tip #1: Try and stay current with your version of WordPress. +All of the aforementioned pages were running Wordpress 1.2 which, +besides being chock-full of vulnerabilities (that were +expoited at least once), doesn't have an +immediate upgrade path to WordPress 2.0. The +WordPress 2.0 upgrade instructions recommend +upgrading from WordPress 1.2 to WordPress 1.5 before +upgrading to WordPress 2.0. Unfortunately, the +WordPress download page only links to the latest release, and it +wasn't immediately apparent from the instructions how to obtain a copy +of WordPress 1.5. Fortunately, a bit of digging turned up +this page, which has every release of WordPress since +the dawn of time. There are at least two other pages indexed by +Google with WordPress 1.5.1.3 tarballs, but both have +incorrect MD5 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 legitimate WordPress archive.

+ +

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 AuthImage support, and a tweaked +xmlrpc.php. In fact, one of the reasons I was hesitant about +upgrading to WordPress 1.5 was that I wasn't too optimistic about +duplicating all that nonsense.

+ +

As of WordPress 2.0, all that hackery has been replaced by the +built-in WordPress 2.0 plugin for Akismet. 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. +Akismet 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 API 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 Akismet bindings for Ruby, although my initial perusal +of the source code tells me they won't work in Linux without a bit +of tweaking (hint: case-sensitive filesystems mean case-sensitive file +names). The only real Akismet annoyance is that in order to get an +API key, you have to sign up for a WordPress.com 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 +http://pablotron.wordpress.com/!).

+ +

Overall though, I have to hand it to the WordPress 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 MySQL console deleting comment spam any more. Either way, I'm +happy.

+ -- cgit v1.2.3