Originally posted 9-28-04.

The ability to leave comments on other people's weblogs and accept comments on your own is one of the features that make blogs so compelling. Accepting comments on your blog however, can be like having an open house party where ill-behaved uninvited guests show up. TypeKey, a free service from Six Apart, can help you control who gets to comment on your weblog.

If you are setting up a new weblog in MT3.x, adding Typekey authentication is easy. You'll need to get a TypeKey token from TypeKey.com and select various comment settings in your weblog config preferences. If you have upgraded to MT3 from an earlier version of Movable Type and want to use TypeKey...

continue reading ...

Question

How do I enable TypeKey on my Movable Type weblog so that visitors can post comments with a registered identity?

Answer

Enabling TypeKey on your site requires a special token which must be added to your Movable Type weblog configuration.

Obtain Your TypeKey Token

Registering for TypeKey creates your TypeKey Profile and generates the required token.

Log into your Profile to view your unique TypeKey Token under Your Weblog Preferences. Copy this token to use later when configuring Movable Type for TypeKey.

Configure TypeKey Profile for...

continue reading ...

Many people have complained about Typekey, how it has lost them commenters. I am currently beta testing out the next MT-Blacklist, so my use of Typekey will be slightly different.

None-the-less, I have Typekey as a method by which commenters can be assured of seeing their comment immediately show up on my weblog. In the new Blacklist, there is something called "Typekey Free Pass." If enabled, comments by TypeKey-authenticated users will not be scanned for blacklist matches, old entry moderation or max URLs. In this way I am putting a lot of faith into the Typekey system. Un-authenticated users will still be able to post, by MT-Blacklist will check the comment for a variety of things...

continue reading ...

Andre Torrez, developer of the super cool service DropCash, has launched Everything TypeKey. It's a new wiki that lists all of the sample code, classes, scripts, tutorials, and applications that have been developed around our TypeKey authentication service.

There's some invaluable resources on the list, including Tim Appnel's TinyOrwell system, which lets you run your own local authentication, as well as TypeKey client sample code in PHP, Perl, and ASP.Net.

We've been very excited to see all the creative ways TypeKey has been used since its launch, and Everything TypeKey should be a good resource to make it easier to build on the platform in the future. If you've got something cool,...

continue reading ...

A conditional tag that displays its contents if the email addresses of all registered users are required by the weblog.

Back to top | Permalink | Comments (0)

MTIfRegistrationAllowed

...

continue reading ...

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...

continue reading ...

Question

I can not make TypeKey work. If somebody clicks on the "logon here for using TypeKey" link, there will be a message saying "The weblog ... has not yet decided to use this function ... please inform the webmaster".

Answer

You have to be very careful, when entering URLs for this function. They have to be absolutely identical. Even a difference in upper / lower case will make this function fail.

The following two URLS must match exactly: • The directory, where you installed Movable Type, also contains a configuration file. It is named mt.cfg. It has a setting called CGIPath, which points to your virtual directory for the Movable Type installation. • If you log in to TypeKey, there will be a section named »Weblog Preferences«. You may enter up to 5 different URLs, which you want to be TypeKey enabled....

continue reading ...

This evening we released many enhancements to our TypeKey authentication service. For this release we addressed some lingering issues, and implemented several new features. Here are some of the highlights. • For new users, we streamlined the registration and account activation process. • When you login to TypeKey, you can now elect to have the system remember you for up to two weeks, streamlining the commenting process for users who comment on TypeKey-enabled blogs frequently. • We introduced a new page that is displayed to TypeKey users if their email sharing preference conflicts with the requesting site's email address collection requirements.

A note to developers that have...

continue reading ...

If you've been kicking around the personal web for a few years, you might remember Metababy, a site where anybody could go and create a new page or edit the ones that were already posted. In these times when people know and use wikis frequently, this isn't that revolutionary, but for a site designed to enable personal expression years ago, it helped open a lot of eyes.

As with many similar efforts, MetaBaby succumbed over time to neglect and spam and offensive postings, but the new MetaBaby has just been relaunched with TypeKey support. There's still the opportunity to post offensive things, of course, but it's a much higher barrier for people who'd just want to automate their...

continue reading ...

Good news for those of you using TypeKey on sites that aren't in English: The authentication service is now available in Japanese, French, Spanish, Dutch and German. Of course, you can still get the delicious original English flavor as well.

If you're still trying to learn how to use TypeKey on your sites or in your applications, be sure to check out Everything TypeKey, where the TypeKey community has collected a wide variety of sample code, client libraries, and tips and tricks.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry: MarsEdit 1.0

Next Entry: Making sites that don't look like blogs

continue reading ...

Question

When visitors sign in with TypeKey to commment, they see a message which says The validation failed.

Answer

If the failed sign-in is recorded in the Activity Log

• Make sure you are using the following setting in mt-config.cgi1: TypeKeyVersion 1.1 • If you have upgraded but are not using the newest default templates, update the TypeKey sign-in links in your template to use the new shortcut tag for these. Using the new tag will force the TypeKeyVersion setting from mt-config.cgi to be applied for these links.

So, look for any sign-in links in...

continue reading ...

You may have noticed that commenters with Typekey identities display a hyperlinked image beside their names: This icon, which is used to signify commenters authenticated via Typekey, is copied to your blog directory when you first publish your blog.

If you like to keep things pretty, you might want to replace the original image (a dark charcoal color... so utilitarian) with one that is color coordinated with your site. Customizing nav-commenters.gif to coordinate with your blog's style is a snap.

How? you ask...

If you want to edit the image yourself, MT's original typekey commenters icon can be found in /path/to/mt/mt-static/images/nav-commenters.gif or, of course, in your...

continue reading ...

Just a quick update to those of you who are building applications on top of the TypeKey service: We'll be updating our servers tonight at 10pm PDT. There are no changes to the protocol, and no downtime is expected, so there should be no impact on your applications, but you'll want to double-check after the update to verify full compatibility.

Most improvements to the service are focused around simplifying registration and sign-in and enabling new features in TypePad.

As always, if you're interested in building your sites or applications on top of TypeKey, we recommend going to the Everything TypeKey wiki for documentation and reference material.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry:...

continue reading ...

Today, we've released more information about TypeKey, which should serve to answer some of the initial questions potential users may have.

While designed first with comment registration in mind, TypeKey will not be limited to usage in Six Apart products. For developers, we plan to offer documentation on integrating TypeKey authentication into your own applications shortly after the service launches.

Look for more information about TypeKey in the coming weeks at typekey.com.

Previous Entry: Testing Begins & More Info about 3.0

Next Entry: Movable Type 3.0 Beta Testing...

continue reading ...

Question

I want to moderate all comments that are posted to my weblog, even those posted by TypeKey commenters.

Answer

Version 3.2 and higher

Version 3.2 gives you more distinct moderation options for both TypeKey and non-TypeKey comments. Navigate to Settings > Feedback : Comments to locate the Immediately publish comments from setting.

You can choose from the following four options for the setting: • No one

If you choose this option, all submitted comments will be held for moderation, whether or not the commenter used TypeKey. • Trusted commenters only...

continue reading ...

We've documented the improvements to TypeKey that were made last night, and some additional minor updates to the service meant that TypeKey registration was intermittently available tonight. The service is now back to 100% performance and, as always, you can follow performance updates on TypePad or TypeKey at any time on the status weblog.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry: Movable Type 3.2's Junk Folder

Next Entry: Trackback moderation and editing

continue reading ...

Since anything worth doing on the web is worth doing with Ajax, Joe D'Andrea's written up his technique for using Ajax with TypeKey. It's a clean and simple implementation of the authentication service, and it's found a good home on the Everything TypeKey site as well.

Trackbacks:

Localtype - The Reverse Trackback - April 25, 2005 07:11 AMFor several years, I have been part of the IA/Design weblog community. Like a good netizen, first I read all I could on the topics that interested me. Soon, I found a good group of authors (see my sidebar for...

Previous Entry: Gathering Feedback with Movable Type

Next Entry: Boeing Blog relaunches

continue reading ...

A quick note if you've built applications or services that connect to TypePad or TypeKey: You'll want to bookmark the Six Apart Status Weblog, where we'll post updates about service status and scheduled downtime.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry: The EFF on How to Blog Safely

Next Entry: feedmap: blogmapping

continue reading ...

Tagalag is a clever new service that lets you easiliy and securely assign tags to email addresses. And if yours is the email address that's tagged, you can claim your address and edit the tags that have been assigned.

We're especially happy to see that you can login with TypeKey to get started with the service, meaning you don't have to create another login just to try it out.

Trackbacks:

Previous Entry: ABC News launches blogs

continue reading ...

Question

Visitors who are trying to comment on my weblog with some browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari) aren't able to do so; they still see the sign in link, instead of the comment posting form. If they use another browser (Firefox, Netscape), they don't have this problem.

Answer

There are several reasons why this might occur in some browsers but not others:

Caching issues

The browser is caching the page; have your visitors refresh the page after signing in to force the page to update.

Your pages are encoded with UTF-8.

Some browsers are more likely...

continue reading ...