Too many people have reported problems getting the WP-SpamFree blocker to recognise that they are not, in fact, a spambot. So that plugin has been deleted and now I have to try and debug a 403 forbidden error that’s screwing up other stuff.
In the meantime, because I’ve become addicted to no longer wading through hundreds of spam every day, I’m enabling comment registration. It’s simple, totally contained within this blog (no third party comment management systems)(see below – you now have a choice) and you can still be as pseudonymous if you like. If I could take this opportunity to request people who’ve been commenting for a while to create a gravatar tied to your commenting email address? It’s just a way of personalising comments further and easily distinguishing commentors with similar names at a glance.
Addendum: Those of you who already have OpenID’s can now use them as your login rather than having to cope with Yet Another Password.
Addendum 2: You’re not stuck with your OpenID blog name as your display name here. You can edit your profile to display the name/pseudonym you prefer.
Categories: Meta
10 years ago today… 
Welcome to our new home! Open thread! With cake recipes! 
Migration open thread (from Hoyden in Exile) 
We’re migrating the blog 
Hoyden About Town 
Done!
Where do we go to upload a gravitar? I’ve looked before, but I could never find it.
Sorry, Beppie – I used to have a link in the blurb above the comment text-input box, but it’s not there anymore. [ETA: now it’s back!]
Go to gravatar.com and follow the instructions.
I think I have a gravatar already….
Done. Let’s see if my Gravatar works…
Ouyang Dan’s last blog post..OYD Cooks!
I can see it!
Did my gravator come with me?
Yes.
As you were.
Oh hai!
Thanks Tigtog 🙂 I couldn’t work out what I was writing that was spammy! And yay for Gravatars, everyone, for they are purty!
Well, aside from the fact that Thunderbird treated the password confirmation email as spam, this seems to have worked. Now about the gravatar…I registered one once upon a time, but can’t check on it until after work.
I am very sad, for I apparently show up as annaoverseas – my login name – but not my name! Woe! this is so tragic, I shall cry in a corner. (Not really – just a head’s up to anyone who wants to sign up with their name appearing, not their typical login.)
[I went in and edited your user profile – if I’ve done it right your future comments should show up as Anna. I edited this one manually. ~tigtog]
Registering was a little weird… Felt like I was thrusting myself into your personal space and it felt weird but in a totally ‘I’m getting away with something’ way.
Anyway, I too have had my fair share of spam plugin frustration. I finally settled on Defensio for my site which works quite well for me. It sifts through comments as they come in and gives them a rating of “spamminess” and quarantines the spam but you can go in and see if any legitimate comments were put in there, etc, which hardly ever happens with Defensio in my experience. But since you have implemented having to register to comment, you should be a lot safer from spam anyway. Good luck!
*waves at Menstrual Poetry*
For anyone else who used a login name that they would rather was not their display name on the site, you can edit your profile and add other details and choose which will be your display name.
Just go to the foot of the blog, click on WordPress Admin over to the right (which takes you to the dashboard), then click on the Profile tab at the very top left. It should be self-explanatory from there.
Does anyone know how to change WordPress passwords? The automatically generated one is too long and tricky for me to remember and I live in fear of losing the bit of paper that has it written on it.
@ Mindy:
Just change the password on your user profile from the admin dashboard, Mindy. You didn’t register just now, did you?
Your browser should remember the password for you anyway. It certainly will if you tell it to.
Thanks Tigtog, I found it. I didn’t re-register. I don’t set my browser to remember since it is a *cough*work*cough* computer and even though it’s highly unlikely that anyone would ever stumble across it, I’d rather not take the risk.
Hopefully this works. Bit surprising logging in and seeing the WordPress dashboard for the HAT site though. Ah well, I’ve asked Firefox to just remember it all, and hopefully that should do the trick.
Testing.
And while I’m here, when I registered at WordPress, I got a page talking about Hoyden as if it was my site – is that a normal compfart that WordPress does?
@ SunlessNick:
yes, WordPress defaults to take subscribers to the admin Dashboard frontpage with all the summaries. I believe that there is a way to force it to take you guys just to your profile, which I am about to find and implement.
OK, I’ve just added a redirect function that should take people back to the blog home page instead of on to the dashboard.
This means that people will no longer be able to edit their own user profiles, which is probably good for when the malicious types start rolling in.Update: you can still access your user profile to edit display name and change passwords by clicking on the WordPress admin link in the footer.Any
one who wants their profile display name edited to display as a different nymproblems, just email me.Testing as well.
So, no password changing available now?
Never mind, I think I worked it out.
Got the ID. which was weird, because it didn’t sue the ID that I’ve used to sign into other WP blogs. Never mind.
I’m just going to dump this here as a reference point regarding the Hoyden policy on pseudonyms for the benefit of any new commentors considering registration: it’s a quote from an oldish post on PharyngulaPseudonymity does not equal Anonymity –
This change to commenting registration will essentially end anonymous commenting, except for those indistinguishable Tom Smith types. I won’t miss the anonymouses, and for the people who use a “real”-sounding name and who end up revealing themselves as vexatious timewasters, they’ll end up in permamod soon enough. Bring on the pseudonyms, say I.
@ MH:
Because this is a privately-hosted wordpress.org WP installation, the ID that you use over at wordpress.com hosted WP blogs isn’t in our database. That’s why you had to create a new one. I’ve edited your user-profile to display the posting-nym that we’re accustomed to seeing from you!
Is it possible to use the WordPress OpenID plugin? It’s not a hugely big deal, but if a commenter has an OpenID (eg, their Livejournal or Dreamwidth or WordPress.com URL) it saves them having to remember Yet Another Password.
@ Mary:
I’ll check it out
OK, OpenID is now an option. That seemed really easy to implement – hope it works OK.
Thanks tigtog. I’ve logged out and logged back in using the OpenID and it all seems to be working on the consumer (authenticating to HAT) end, which is what I wanted.
Great! That should make life much easier for lots of commentors.
Just testing. Up until now I’ve posted here as P.P. or Princess Poophead but this is a good opportunity to be consistent across the internets.