I’m not sure why but over the past couple of months I’ve been sprayed with comments linked to some very questionable web sites. Just from the URLs it was easy to tell they hadn’t been posted by anyone interested in my ranting. I got rid of them as fast as possible but it was quite annoying, not just in the time it took but in the fact that I’d rather not have this crap associated with my personal brand of higher class crap.

I’m undoubtedly the last person to find this particular solution, but a friend pointed me to a Movable Type plug-in system called Blacklist by a very talented and generous person named Jay Allen. Blacklist works by checking the links posted in the comments section and checking them against a list of known spam strings and domain names. A comment on that list is blocked from being posted if one of those strings shows up. Amazingly enough, it works! The offensive comments have stopped.

Blacklist was easy to install and configure (very good directions on the site). Of course, I have to keep the list up to date but that takes much less time and effort than finding and deleting the postings. I’ll be heading over to Jay’s site to leave a small donation of thanks for a great service.