Site News: April 2008 Archives
File under General Geekery:
It came to my attention a while back that the comment submission procedure on Movable Type 4 (and specifically this blog) was less than elegant. So I turned off the default registration-required settings and set it to allow for anonymous Captcha-filtered comments. But it turns out that this was even a worse idea because the Captcha didn't even show up on the comment submission form, leading to unpredictable errors when a comment was submitted. It went something like this:
Step 1: Comment Submission: "Hello, I'm submitting this comment on an entry and there is no spam checking - wow! There isn't even a Captcha image! I'm going to tell all of my pharmaceutical distributor friends!"
Step 2: User clicks submit, with evil spam plots brewing in the back of his or her mind.
Step 3: Movable Type processes the comment and checks whether the entered text matched the generated Captcha. Here's the problem - the end user never saw a Captcha image.
Result: End user gets an ugly message and runs around in circles in frustration, their evil plans to spam-bomb me having been defeated.
Meanwhile, I'm pleased that I'm not getting any comment spam, but I'm feeling a little rejected because I'm not getting any valid comments either. I'm thinking that I might welcome some spam. I know people are reading - I get several emails a week asking follow up questions. I keep thinking to myself, why don't they just enter a comment - maybe someone else can help?
The Five Minute Solution: Take out all of the screwy if/else statements from the Comment Form template so that the Captcha will display no matter what. Since I took out all of the other authentication methods these statements aren't needed anyways. This seems to work, so comments are working (for now...)
It came to my attention a while back that the comment submission procedure on Movable Type 4 (and specifically this blog) was less than elegant. So I turned off the default registration-required settings and set it to allow for anonymous Captcha-filtered comments. But it turns out that this was even a worse idea because the Captcha didn't even show up on the comment submission form, leading to unpredictable errors when a comment was submitted. It went something like this:
Step 1: Comment Submission: "Hello, I'm submitting this comment on an entry and there is no spam checking - wow! There isn't even a Captcha image! I'm going to tell all of my pharmaceutical distributor friends!"
Step 2: User clicks submit, with evil spam plots brewing in the back of his or her mind.
Step 3: Movable Type processes the comment and checks whether the entered text matched the generated Captcha. Here's the problem - the end user never saw a Captcha image.
Result: End user gets an ugly message and runs around in circles in frustration, their evil plans to spam-bomb me having been defeated.
Meanwhile, I'm pleased that I'm not getting any comment spam, but I'm feeling a little rejected because I'm not getting any valid comments either. I'm thinking that I might welcome some spam. I know people are reading - I get several emails a week asking follow up questions. I keep thinking to myself, why don't they just enter a comment - maybe someone else can help?
The Five Minute Solution: Take out all of the screwy if/else statements from the Comment Form template so that the Captcha will display no matter what. Since I took out all of the other authentication methods these statements aren't needed anyways. This seems to work, so comments are working (for now...)
When I upgraded to Movable Type 4 several months ago, I wasn't able to find the time to tweak the style to my liking. I just went with one of the default styles and let it go. I've noticed a lot of other Movable Type blogs out there with the same style lately and decided I definitely needed a change. As hikers say, "Hike you own hike," I say, "blog your own blog." This week I finally set aside some evening hours to play with the templates a bit and made some changes. The header image is the Whitney Ridge from the west side (sunset view from Guitar Lake) taken from last summer's John Muir Trail trip - it's a picture that brings back happy memories of one of my favorite nights on the trail.
I'm still tweaking some CSS (the fonts don't want to play very nice) and I've also added a link to my new wildflowers page in the top navigation (also a work in progress). There will likely be a few more changes since I'm not entirely happy with what I've done in a short period of time, but at least I am now unique and no longer using a default Movable Type template.
I'm still tweaking some CSS (the fonts don't want to play very nice) and I've also added a link to my new wildflowers page in the top navigation (also a work in progress). There will likely be a few more changes since I'm not entirely happy with what I've done in a short period of time, but at least I am now unique and no longer using a default Movable Type template.
