As I blogged about earlier, I've altered .Text (the blog software that currently runs ScottOnWriting.NET) data model to include a trigger that, when a new item is added to the blog_Content table, checks to see if it contains either over 20 hyperlinks or contains a link to one of the URLs listed in a blog_BannedURLs table. If such a nefarious comment is found, not only is it not saved, but another table has a counter incremented to let me ascertain just how much comment spam has been stopped. Since January 24 of this year my trigger technique has caught 2,292 comment spams. Amazing and depressing at the same time.
The trigger approach looks for offending URLs in both trackbacks and comments, searching both the body of the comment as well as the poster's specified URL. One item that my trigger does not check, though, is the comment one might leave when rating a blog entry. There's no reason to check what the user enters into the (optional) comments section when rating a blog entry because the comment appears only in an email that is sent directly to me.
Today I found out that comment spammers don't necessarily check too closely whether or not their spammed content actually appears on the site. Today I received a little over 50 emails from my comment rater, chalked full of links to a sundry of adult sites purporting to have pictures of Ashley and Mary Kate. (Why someone would want to look at those anorexics is beyond me...)
Been meaning to blog more as of late, but work's been keeping me down. My tentative plans for upcoming tasks relating to this blog include:
- Porting ScottOnWriting.NET from .Text 0.94 to Community Server, although part of me wants to wait until version 1.2, when Rob promises the API will be frozen. The nice thing about moving to Community Server is that I'll be able to move the blogs for skmMenu and RssFeed from GotDotNet - which appears to be down every other day - to Community Server Forums here on the ScottOnWriting.NET server.
- Making a blog entry about the webcam software I wrote back in January. Earlier in this year I picked up a Logitech Webcam and wrote some software that will periodically upload the latest pic to a web server using FTP. The app's been running in the background on my machine without incident since late January and, seeing as the app's built upon a number of open-source projects, I thought it would be nice to share the source with those who are interested.
- Blogging about ASP.NET 2.0. Prior to the latest work crunch (which started, not coincidentally, as the same date as my last blog entry), I had spent some additional time with the 2.0 bits. With Beta 2 coming out at the end of this month, I thought it would be good to get proactive and start rambling on about v Next.