Pinging Knight

Hey all. You've probably experienced Internal Server Errors somewhat frequently recently. It's been a frustrating experience for all of us, and I've been trying to fix the problem since it began happening quite a while ago. I thought it was some sort of configuration problem of mine, but signs now point elswhere.

Specifically, they point to the heavy load of comment spam we get: disabling access to the commenting script seems to solve the problem completely. I remember hearing news that other servers have had to remove MovableType because comment spammers were causing it to crash their servers. It seems the same with us. There is a new version of MovableType with better spam fighting features, but it'd cost me a few hundred dollars.

So here's the deal: I'm going to migrate people to use WordPress instead of MovableType. It's nifty. It also has something called comment moderation; comments will not appear unless the owner of the blog tells them to. Once approved, theoretically the person who posted the comment never has to be reauthorized on that particular blog again.

I haven't heard too much of WordPress spam crippling servers, and with comment moderation it's not really a in the spammer's best interest to attack WordPress, so hopefully this will work.

I'll set up a communal test blog for you all to check out soon.