Monthly Archives: November 2009

Closing Comments to Control Spam

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About a week ago, I set WordPress to automatically close comments on posts over 90 days old on my Reclaimer website. Spam comments over there have become completely unreasonable lately, with Akismet catching and filtering out upwards of 300 spam a day. The vast majority ended up going into the Pending queue rather than the Spam queue for whatever reason. No big deal, mind you; it was only one additional step to filter them into the Spam buffer and then out of the system completely, but it was becoming a tad annoying. That was when I decided to try closing comments to see what effect it would have on spam. Very few of my readers, even new ones, ever comment on the old archives anyway, so cutting that section out of dialogue was no huge loss.

I also use the IntenseDebate commenting system on all my WordPress installations. I was puzzled to discover that setting WordPress to automatically close comments had no effect on IntenseDebate. I spent a little while trying to figure out why before finally giving up and just accepting that something somewhere was broken.

Today, it clicked in my head – IntenseDebate doesn’t replace the native WordPress commenting system; it simply overlays it. By changing the auto-close setting for comments, WordPress closed the native commenting system without affecting the IntenseDebate commenting system (which seems to be a little more robust about handling spam). Spammers appear to target the native WordPress commenting system while ignoring the IntenseDebate system – possibly because IntenseDebate loads via javascript – and since the native system is closed on the posts they target, they don’t have a way to infiltrate. In the last week, I’ve watched the number of spam that slip through go from 300+ a day to just one or two a day. The difference is remarkable, and I’ve heard zero complaints from readers about not being able to comment on older posts.

Probably I should have realized how this worked sooner, but sometimes I’m just a little slower on the uptake.

MediaTemple (dv) and suPHP

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A while back I switched my web hosting from Bluehost to MediaTemple. Basically, I needed the additional bandwidth and the ability to have full control over my server setup. MediaTemple came highly recommended, and I’ve never been sorry I switched.

The downside was that the ability to easily upgrade plugins and the core software in my various WordPress installations become a bit more rigorous. It’s a common complaint that MediaTemple server installations won’t treat users as the owners of installed files. For WordPress installations, this means that any time a site owner attempts to install new plugins or themes or update existing ones, the owner has to provide the appropriate FTP credentials.

A little research turned up suPHP as the solution. Trouble is, suPHP is a little bit of a headache to install for those not entirely comfortable with back-end installations. Fortunately, I came this how-to the other day, which details the way to go about installing suPHP on a MediaTemple (dv) server. It took me about an hour of twiddling with things to finally get it all up and running, but I finally have suPHP installed on my server, thus automating the upgrade and installation process for WordPress installations everywhere. If you’re hosted on MediaTemple (dv), I’d recommend taking a look at the tutorial.

HowTo: Install Ghostscript on MediaTemple

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This is a repost of my original writeup over on Shamus Writes.

I thought I’d go ahead and describe the process for installing Ghostscript on a MediaTemple (dv) server, especially since I’ve already got one reader who would like to see it.

Use your favorite shell client to log on to your (mt) account as root. I use PuTTY Portable from the “portableapps.com”:http://portableapps.com website. At the command line typ:

cd /usr

Type:

wget http://ghostscript.com/releases/ghostscript-8.63.tar.gz

Once the file is done downloading, type:

tar -xvf ghostscript-8.63.tar.gz

Once _that’s_ done, type:

cd ghostscript-8.63

Type:

./configure

which will run for a moment and display a long list of output. Once you have the command line back, type:

make

which will take a bit longer to run than the configure command. Again, once you have the command line back, type:

make install

which will actually install Ghostscript on your server. Provided everything went well and no error messages showed up at any step along the way, you should now have Ghostscript installed. The default location for Ghostscript is:

/usr/local/bin/gs

Typing:

which gs

in the command line will confirm this. If you want to do cleanup, just move back up a directory to

/usr

and type :

rm ghostscript-8.63.tar.gz
rm -vrf ghostscript-8.63

From there, just configure whatever script you want to run with ImageMagick and Ghostscript according to said script’s specifications and have fun!

Borrowing from Other Cartoonists

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I‘ve been doing a lot of drawing in my sketchbook recently. I try to do at least a little bit every day. I’m told that the best way to hone one’s craft is to practice daily, and I’m finding that this wisdom seems to be true. The more I draw, I more comfortable I become with my cartooning. But there are still some areas where I struggle, one of which is with drawing hands (a not uncommon problem for artists). So, I’ve been ‘borrowing’ art from other cartoonists in an effort to get a feel for various methods of drawing.

Several pages in my sketchbook contain characters from Dave Kellet’s wonderful “Sheldon”:http://www.sheldoncomics.com/ comic. His style of art is similar to the type I want to emulate once I get my own “Starchips”:http://starchipscomic.com off the ground, and so it is his comic that serves as my primary inspiration for developing my own art style. I’ve also ‘borrowed’ some art from Dave Reddick’s “Legend of Bill”:http://www.legendofbill.com comic and Kris Straub’s “Starslip”:http://starslip.com comic. These are all comics I enjoy for the stories, the humor, and the art. There are plenty of others, as well, but these are the ones I’ve been looking at closely and drawing the most of lately in order to refine some of my own trouble spots.

Below are a couple of recent examples of what I’m working on. I think I’m starting to get better…

IMG_5356

AHA Jack Monroe Benefit Ride, Myrtle Beach

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Over this past weekend, my wife, sister-in-law, and I took a couple of horses down to Myrtle Beach, SC, for the annual American Heart Association Jack Monroe Benefit Ride. It’s a time when a couple of thousand people take over a campground with their horses and spend a couple of days out riding on the beach. The money raised from the event goes to help the AHA in their research for ways to prevent heart disease.

The weather for the weekend was great — warm, sunny, and gorgeous! The girls spent every moment they could out riding on the beach. I, armed with camera, snapped lots and lots of pictures. The photo gallery of my photos is below, and you can go to our farm’s website for all the pictures taken by the three of us.
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