Movable Type upgrade, part two — fixing comments

Comments — which on my Movable Type install are only enabled on The Map Room at this point — went blooey a bit. At the outset, I tried enabling TypeKey registration and moderating unregistered comments: TypeKey logins would be posted immediately; otherwise comments would wait in a moderation queue until I approved them. Except that didn’t work: TypeKey information wasn’t passed on, and all my test comments were moderated. A bit of checking led to a possible cause: my MT install is on mcwetboy.com, but The Map Room is on mcwetboy.net — the authentication system uses cookies, and cookies cannot normally be passed between domains. I’m sure a hack could be worked out eventually, but I lack the l33t sk1llz, and I’d already spent the better part of Thursday getting this far.

So I decided to leave things unauthenticated, but bolstered my spam fighting with the following tools: DSBL, which checks comments against a blacklist of open proxies; and Real Comment Throttle, which limits the number of posts from any IP (since spammers routinely attack with multiple IPs). I’ve set a limit low enough to catch even a small-scale spam attack, but high enough to allow my usual comment volume. I still close comments on entries older than 45 days, and now comments are force-moderated on entries older than 10 days.

My spam-blocking is not as absolute as it would be with TypeKey, but it’s quantitatively better than it was before I upgraded. (I should also mention that MT-Blacklist works much better on Movable Type 3.1x than it did on 2.6x.)

All my other plugins seem to still be working, including CloseComments and RSSFeed. A tip if you’re upgrading: delete your old MT-Blacklist. Having both Blacklist plugins running can lead to some strange side effects, including multiple e-mail notifications and forcing every comment to be moderated, regardless of your settings.