I’ve been in a bit of a low-motivation run the last few days.  I’m getting the itch back now, but I think I needed some downtime.  As I’ve mentioned before, Sanctuary of the Wood has priority because of my long-standing tradition of always putting out a new story in the series for Earth Day.

Beyond that, I’m also working on adapting the code for the anti-spam measures I’ve implemented on the forum and blog to apply to my contact forms.  This is important because the LST3K section will have a couple of initial user interactive features, and eventually have many more.  I want to be able to check for the spammers there and block them from coughing up spam in these sections as well.

The code to check isn’t that complicated, really.  Neither is the code to automatically update the database, but I’ll probably skip that part and just save a log of any spammers caught in the other areas of the site so I can manually add them.

I’m also throttling back the plugin on the blog, because the standard spam blocking has always worked before to keep the actual posts from showing up.  What the new plugin does is keep the spammers from registering and clogging up my database.  However, it also blocks spam comments completely.

When I give more leeway in the new plugin, it lets more stuff through.  However, the original plugin still catches all this.  It also saves the spammy links when this happens, though.  That allows me to submit “evidence” of the spam as well as the fact that I’ve encountered a known spammer.  Eventually, that will be far more valuable information as the databases expand to start checking for spam and malware links as well as the data they already provide.

Can’t do that on the forum, because right now, the spammer attack is too concentrated there.  If it ever slows down, I may throttle that back as well, for the same reason I’m throttling back on the blog.  I want my website to be a source of protecting other websites from these spammer scumbags by providing every ounce of data about them I can.

Naturally, there’s a lot of story ideas and partial work floating around.  There’s just not enough progress to really deserve a report here.  I just want to keep the blog updated so that nobody thinks I’ve dropped off the face of the earth when I’m in a bit of a lull with forward progress.

As I’ve said before, the forum/shoutbox is another source of information.  Some things get posted there at times when the blog isn’t getting updated.  This may be because they’re just small things that don’t deserve much more than a quick post on the Shoutbox, or because they’re forum specific, or because that’s just where I happened to be when I thought about something *laugh*