Sigh…

I can't tell you how many hours a day I spend battling splogs. Spam blog registrations are a curse on any WordPress MU environment and I am doing my best to keep the scourge at bay. Can anyone register? Yes. That gives people in need immediate access to the forums, chat room and their blog. The only true way to stop sploggers is to disable registration and manually approve all requests. If we do that here, people suffer, and the spammers win.

I won't go into all the technical details of the efforts I have taken – and continue to take every day – to stop spam blog registrations here. None are usually live for more than a few hours. Deleting any that have been created is the first thing I do in the morning, the last thing I do at night, and tops my list of to-dos many times throughout the day. Today, I happened to go out for the day before checking in. I am sorry if any of these cursed expletives offended you, they sure do me. And you have perfect reason to vent. If I were to join you, however, I might miss a dozen or so splog registrations while venting.

Believe it or not, I just implemented tactics this week that cut the number of spam blogs down by at least 75% … yes, that much. And I am about to take even more severe steps. But I will not let them win.

Stay tuned to my Behind the Scenes blog for complete details, once I ensure these new anti-spam blog steps I do take won't wreak havoc on any valid user accounts.

For now, all users can help by reporting any questionable blogs via email or PM. Though quite honestly, by that time I will likely have either already deleted it, or be asleep. Any potential new users should note that any username ending in four numerical digits will now be autmatically denied.

There. Now I have vented too. And yes, it does feel good. Now, back to smashing splogs!