p2pnet.net News:- Comment spam attacks on Movable Type weblogs are straining servers at web hosting companies leading some of them to disable comments, says Britain’s Netcraft.

“The issues are caused by bugs in MT, forcing publisher Six Apart to recommend configuration changes while it prepares fixes,” it says.

“Comment spam, also known as link spam, is believed to boost a site’s ranking in Google, which uses inbound links as a measure of a site’s popularity,” says Netcraft, going on:

“Spammers are using automated scripts to bombard weblogs with comments that include links to sites offering prescription drugs or porn. While weblogs on all platforms have been affected, Movable Type and its mt-comments.cgi script have become a particular target.”

Movable Type product manager Jay Allen says he’s spent several thousand waking hours working on the attacks since they first appearedin the fall of 2003, "both as the author of MT-Blacklist and as the maintainer of the Comment Spam Clearinghouse".

MT has been devoting a great deal of resources to solving the comment spam problem once and for all and making it a non-issue, not just for the Movable Type/TypePad world, but also for all weblogs regardless of publishing tool, he states, going on:

"We are currently testing these fixes both in-house and with a number of web hosts who were among the first affected by the problem."

In the meantime," one way you can help protect your system and mitigate the effects of both problems is by enabling dynamic templates," he says.

"Under normal conditions, there are many factors to consider in choosing dynamic templates vs. static templates. In general, the higher your site’s traffic is, the more beneficial static templates are to you. However, since spam attacks are rapid requests that would cause rebuilding in the case of static pages, the sweet spot is moved far towards dynamic templates, even for high traffic sites.

"If you would like to change your templates to dynamic, you should check out the Dynamic Publishing section in the Movable Type documentation and also Elise Bauer and Arvind Satyanarayan’s tutorial on the subject.

"When setting up your dynamic pages, choose the ‘Build Only Archive Templates Dynamically’ option. This choice means your archive templates will not be rebuilt upon comment or TrackBack submission. If you still experience high loads, you can choose the third ‘custom’ option and set all of your templates to dynamic.

"This is also a good time to mention our TypeKey authentication service which has proven very effective in stopping weblog spam. If you are interested in setting up TypeKey, check out our public TypeKey tutorial posted today on ProNet."

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See:-
site’s ranking - Hosts Disable Movable Type as Comment Spam Slows Servers, Netcraft, December 17, 2004
waking hours – Comment spam load issue, Movable Type, December 16, 2004

This entry was posted on Monday, December 20th, 2004 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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