Upgrading
Okay, the site itself has been upgraded to Movable Type 3.17. However, I’m still trying to get used to all the new stuff, so please be patient in the meantime. One point is that the comments are now being moderated, which means that when you leave a comment, it will not be posted immediately. Instead, it will be sent to me for approval, and will appear when I get to it. I’ll try to make that as soon as possible, but it might take several hours (especially if I’m sleeping!). Anyone out there know, for example, how to create registered commenters? I’ll learn how, but I gotta do some reading and experimenting, and I did sort of start this project late at night on the eve of a workday. So there’ll be a bit of a lag before stuff gets smoothed out.
Hopefully, the upgrade (along with MT-Blacklist 2 once I get around to installing it) will come along quickly. Anyone out there with experience with version three and you know some possible kinks in the system and things to look out for, let me know!
Any difference, from the user’s point of view, other than the comment lag?
One disadvantage to moderating the comments is that folks may look at the blog once a day, and comment on comments, yet if the comments are not there due to the moderating lag, they may miss them.
Couple things I didn’t like in 3.16/7 was that the nofollow plugin was ON by default and that caused some window targeting problems with my popup comments windows. The URLs which commenters were setting were being forwarded via another function and that cause their page to load in the popup comment window. You don’t use that here so it should not be a problem.
In 3.16 there was a bug when uploaded images (problem with an escaped slash character) which has been resolved in 3.17
Also, moblogging services like mfop2 don’t work with 3.XX
Basically, none of the things you need to worry about!
I had previously changed my comment scripting so that no pop-up windows would appear, as that was advised as a way to avoid spam. Didn’t work, but I was too lazy to change it. So one of the first things I’m doing is bringing back those popups, closing the “no-follow,” and seeing if I can’t get you guys and all new posters who are not spammers “approved” so that moderation will only be needed for those who never posted before.
So in a few days–hopefully–things should be running smoothly again.