The Aerie

Happiness is an Empty Mailbox

Ah, so happy.

My changes to the website to prevent spam comments and trackbacks is working. I no longer have to go in every day and delete 200 trackbacks for P3-n1Le |mP1@nTs and other such crap. For all I know I've crippled the ability of ANYONE to do a trackback to me, but I don't much care. Until spamming is a capital crime with enforcement by INTERPOL we must do what we can to survive.

In case anyone else wants to password protect their mt-comments.cgi and mt-tb.cgi files, here's how you do it. As usual no warranty is express or implied and for all I know your doing this could tear a hole in the spacetime continuum and destroy the universe.

This is on FC4 Linux with Apache, and this goes in the httpd.conf file:

<Location /MT/mt-comments.cgi>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Enter username 'comment' with no password, then click the 'Remember My Password' box"
AuthUserFile /path/to/password/filename
Require valid-user
</Location>
<Location /MT/mt-tb.cgi>
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Enter 'comment' with no pw, click 'Remember password'"
AuthUserFile /path/to/password/filename
Require valid-user
</Location>

To create a password file:

% cd /path/to/password
% htpasswd -cb filename comment

That's it! I don't really know how trackbacks work, so for all I know this will prevent any trackback from working. But I do know that I haven't had a spam since I started using this method, so let's cross our fingers.