Gothamist recently published its Policies for comments, author contributions, and weblog ethics. It's a good lead that will need to be followed by all professional weblog publishers in order to reaffirm the credibility of the new medium.

Given the ongoing discussion of weblog ethics that has resurfaced with Nick Denton's proposal for a weblog ethics organization, it's good to point out examples that can be used as a template. As Jeff Jarvis has explained, some shared ideas around ethics policies can go a long way towards addressing the issue without a need for a formal or centralized effort.

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As we've just announced, we'll be supporting the new rel="nofollow" attribute for comment and TrackBack links with our platforms.

With the introduction of the new spec, it's worth reviewing the initiative for Professional Network members who'd like an overview of the entire effort. • What is nofollow?

The HTML specification allows a tags for hyperlinks to include a rel attribute. This attribute is used to specify a link type describing the relationship between the document hosting the hyperlink and the document that is the target of the hyperlink. • Is this valid HTML?

Yup. Though the rel attribute has been relatively obscure (it's used in XFN and Technorati's tags, but...

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Anti-Spam

Getting the most out of MT-Blacklist - MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse: Getting the most out of MT-Blacklist Birdhouse notes on Comment Spam - Why this web host is forcing comment registration Blacklist to Mod Security - by Peter Wood Brad Choate: SpamLookup - anti-spam plugin Interview with a Comment Spammer - The Register's interview with a blog comment spammer. MT-Approval Plugin - Prevents comment spam from spam bots MT-DSBL Open Proxy Comment Filter - from Brad Choate MT-Moderate - Plugin for moderating trackbacks and comments from Chad Everett Mod Rewrite to Block Bot Spam - Mod Rewrite method to divert comment spam bots to a 403...

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UPDATE

I've had this idea swimming around my head ever since Planet Mozilla launched but never implemented it because until a few weeks ago I was under the impression that my host did not provide Python.

Anyways, announcing Planet Movable Type.

What is it?

Planet MT aggregates posts from the following weblogs: • 6A ProNet (feed) • Brad Choate (feed) • Chad Everett (feed) • David Raynes (feed) • Girlie's Tips & Tricks (feed) • Learning Movable Type (feed) • MT Forge Dev (feed) • MT Plugins (feed) • MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse (feed) • Mena's Corner (feed) • Movable Type News (feed) • MovableStyle (feed) • Movalog (feed) • Neil's World (feed) • Phil Ringalda (feed) • Six Apart (feed) • The Tweezer's Edge...

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The world is afire this morning with talk of the announcements by Six Apart and the three major search engines ( Google, MSN and Yahoo) to support a new HTML attribute named nofollow (in full, rel="nofollow"). By adding this attribute to your link anchors, the search engines will no longer consider the linking page as a component of the linked page's rank.

The idea is a simple one: Add this attribute to all link tags that you don't want to contribute to the rank of the linked page. For instance, comments and trackbacks, which are submitted to your site by users, are by their very nature considered "unknowns". Adding this attribute to those tags means you don't "stand up" for the value...

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Given the recent rash of comment spam attacks that are causing significant increases in server load and affecting a wide variety of Movable Type installations, we've republished the following Knowledge Base article on the Professional Network site. Movable Type Knowledge Base articles are typically available to users with paid licenses who have logged in to the " Your Account" link on the Movable Type website, but the following article is available free of charge and does not require a login to view.

Professional Network members have access to the full Movable Type knowledge base as part of the members' license for Movable Type.

Getting Started

Enabling TypeKey on your site...

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During the comment spam crisis, before 3.14 was released, my host installed something called mod_security. I have noticed that ever since it was installed, the comment spam flood I normally experienced turned into a trickle. mod_security helps with a lot of things. It's good for helping block a lot of the script vulnerability attacks like cross-site scripting, bad PHP includes, etc so there's a good chance it will be installed on your host, if not ask them.

If you do have mod_security installed, I will guide you through setting it up such that it blocks of comment spam. What is the advantage of mod_security over MT-Blacklist? mod_security scans the comment before it hits MT-Blacklist or...

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A year ago this week, trying to keep track of everything I was learning regarding using Movable Type, I wrote my first MT tutorial and launched Learning Movable Type. Stung by comments in the forums to RTFM (read the f%$#ng manual), exasperated that the manual - while thorough - seemed to be written in some foreign geek language understandable only to those who could probably write code in their sleep, and determined that other newbies and non-techies would not suffer the tens and hundreds of hours of lost productivity pulling their collective hairs out over trying to get some dang thing on their MT blog to work, I got to writing.

It must be clear to most technically savvy people who...

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12.20.2004

Movable Type 3.14 released

We have just released Movable Type v3.14 which fixes the issue of extreme loads witnessed on servers under the strain of a massive spam attack. Because these attacks are increasing in both frequency and severity, we strongly recommend that all Movable Type users install this update. This is particularly important for any installation that is visible to the public on the web.

This release is a free update for Movable Type v3.x users and has been thoroughly tested both in-house, by our ProNet members and also by many of the web hosting companies initially affected by the problem. If you already purchased Movable Type...

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01.18.2005

Movable Type 'nofollow' plugin

Today we are pleased to announce our full support for the rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks introduced to address the main cause of weblog spam: the payoff of higher placement in search engine results.

This initiative, with announced support from Google, Yahoo, MSN (and surely more to come), will direct search engines to ignore links with this attribute set for the purposes of spidering or increasing search engine relevance or ranking.

For current users of Movable Type (note: this plugin is included by default starting with version 3.16), this support is implemented as a simple plugin ( zip [4K], tar/gzip [3K]-- tested on MT 3.x and MT 2.661). For most users enabling "nofollow" support involves placing a single file in your plugins directory. All links submitted by external users in comments and TrackBacks will then be modifed to add the...

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We are pleased to announce that the release of Movable Type 3.2 is nearly upon us. Feature development for this version was driven almost entirely by requests from our community of users and, therefore, the changes are tightly focused around the way you use the software. Overall, Movable Type 3.2 makes all the common tasks we perform with Movable Type much more satisfying.

Between now and the time it is released, we will be covering "Our 32 Favorite features in Movable Type 3.2" on the Professional Network weblog. Though we'll only be covering highlights of the new version, this release features over 100 new features and improvements. We're sure all users will find this to...

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Learning Movable Type is now hosted on a new server and now has its own domain name - http://www.learningmovabletype.com. In the process of changing servers and changing URLs, we may have created some broken links or other site hiccups. If you encounter something that just doesn't seem to be working properly, please email me using the contact form.

Humongous thanks to Chad and Arvind for their invaluable assistance with this move.

If you link to Learning Movable Type (and we hope you do) please, please, please change the URL in your link to the new one. That way, Google will find us more easily, and those using Google to find things regarding Movable Type will find us more easily too....

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02.28.2005

TypePad UK Launches

We're proud to announce today that TypePad has launched in the UK. Though it was our least strenuous language translation ever, we're proud to have another country-specific offering to complement our current services in Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Spain, and The United States.

Posted by anildash in TypePad at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Trackback (0)

02.27.2005

Dreamforce, blogs for the Salesforce.com community

Salesforce.com is one of the most popular hosted business applications, with an active community of users and developers. One of the ways that they're keeping in touch with these diverse...

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As part of the ongoing efforts against comment spam, Jay Allen has released Blacklist v2.03-beta. This release is designed to take advantage of the improvements in Movable Type 3.14, and the combination of the two is an excellent way to manage comment spam while not imposing too much of a burden on your web server.

If you're using an older version of MT-Blacklist, it's strongly recommended that you update to this new version. And just to review, MT-Blacklist, despite the name, MT-Blacklist offers a wide variety of techniques to manage or moderate comments or block spam, in addition to its namesake Blacklisting feature.

Trackbacks:

Munuviana - Dropping the other shoe - December 22, 2004 10:41 PM...

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3.2 Public Beta

UPDATE The beta blog is live. Read all the entries and download 3.2, there's plenty to play with! Jay's just posted an announcement to ProNet with some juicy details. Movable Type 3.2 will be going into a beta sometime tomorrow...

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Posted on 07/14/2005 | Permalink | Comments (7)

MT 3.1 Screenshots

Movable Type 3.1 is the feature upgrade that everyone was looking for in 3.0D. There are three main new features, dynamic templating, post scheduling and subcategories. Lets take a tour around these new features. These are some screenshots from the...

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Having recently installed Movable Type 3.11, I decided to have a look at the newly-available Plugin Pack for Movable Type. One plugin - MT-Blacklist - is very worth while; others are interesting but not particularly useful for me, and others don't even interest me.

I installed MT-Blacklist because this past week we've been getting assaulted by comment spam. Over the past year we've gotten one or two comment spams per week, but this past week we've gotten over 60! This plugin looks at every comment (and trackback) left on this site. If it's spam, it's never posted; if it's questionable it's put in a "moderation"...

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3-Column 404 Error About Page Absolute Pixel Sizes Accessibility Activity Log Add Your Links Here Adding An Author Additional Weblog Adsense Advertising Affiliate Programs Align Attribute Alphabetize Entries Alternative Search Template Amazon Amazon Web Services Archive Pages Archives Ascii Characters and Symbols Ascii Mode Audioblog Author Archives Authors Background Background Patterns Backing Up Your Blog Backup Banner Banner Images Berkeley DB Binary Mode BinHex Mode Blockquotes Blog Maintenance Bloglet Book Review Bookmarklet BookQueueToo Buttons Captcha Captions Categories Category Category Archive Category Archiving CGIWrap Changing Servers CHMOD Chron Job Clocks Closing Comments...

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We're proud to announce that Movable Type 3.2 is now available. This release improves upon what is already the most powerful blogging platform by offering a better experience at every step. This new version combines the strengths and innovations you have come to expect from Movable Type over the past four years, boosted by the addition of over 100 unique new features that will help your blogs truly shine.

Best of all, it's a free update for any licensed user of Movable Type 3.x. Personal users will be happy to find that the Free edition now offers unlimited blogs. And personal users who want a multi-user license and access to our famed technical support can now take...

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Hacking Movable Type

I finally got my copy of Hacking Movable Type and finished reading it last night. Written by the biggest names in the Movable Type community, the 300 pages of Movable Type goodness guide you through getting the most out...

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Posted on 08/21/2005 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Firefox Search Plugins

I had forgotten to share these little goodies that I frequently use. The little search bar in Firefox is indespensible for me and I have all sorts of search engines there including many Movable Type resources. Here are three...

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Posted on 03/20/2005 |...

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Thanks in large part to the help and feedback from Professional Network members, we've just released Movable Type 3.14. This release addresses the performance issues detailed last week, and we'll be providing additional guidance and information to ProNet members later this week once this release is deployed. Thank you to all who contributed and tested this version over the weekend.

Trackbacks:

einfach-persnlich - Movable Type 3.14 freigegeben - December 21, 2004 07:50 AMDie Version 3.14 von Movable Type ist freigegeben. Six Apart reagiert als Hersteller der Weblog-Software Movable Type damit auf die aktuellen Fehler ihres Weblog-Tools und empfiehlt allen Anwendern das...

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