In my review of this site and sorting in time for the reboot, I have found one main area the focus of my developmentl; the commenting. As with all blogs I have found that my comments lack from a user and spam preventing aspect. Only today I cleared down a pile of steaming spam and returned to poke my server a few hours later to find the spam dog had laid another pile of doo in my absense. It is an age old blogging problem that you can goggle until your heart is content. The answers are varied in practice and extremes. There is the case for turning of comments all together, but personally I find talking to myself wears thin. So, I have been looking at other ways.
When I first relaunched this blog as part of the last November CSS Reboot, the focus was the design and not really the nuts and bolts engine. The ultimate aim was just to get back on track with the content and look. I am relatively happy I suceeded in varied amounts at this. With this new version I am aiming to make the engine work better for myself. My personal decision regarding comments is to create a function to check them and flag any new commenters. These new commenters will then have a flag put on their comment and an email sent to me. Once I read them and decide if they are steaming dog doo or not, I will then either post in a spam list or allow the comment. Although, I do feel this smacks a bit of big brother I am finding it a need not a want. This is a common method and what I hope will be resulting in a reduction at least.
Another technique I am looking to deploy is to actually enhance the commenting for the users. This is going to be done through implementing a preview which is then followed by a post. By choosing this method, I am optimistic to bash a bit of spam doos also. In doing these measures I do not make some grand assumption that I will end up bringing my spam doo rate to zero. I am not a fool and would never wave that red rag impossible concept around. I want people to comment and I also want some control over the repeat spam offenders.
I hope that these changes are going to both be done in time and also improve this site rather than turn people away. If you have any other suggestions for improvements then just let me know. I am always interested in feedback with regards to this work in progress blog.
