Changing Membership Info on Manila
I had one of those “Aha!” moments on the scratchpad. While combating the latest round of comment spam (almost 1000 spam since mid November and it’s coming in at a rate of about 100 per day right now {Ugh!}), I found a widget where I should be able to update some information for members of this weblog. I know some of you who are members have wondered how to make changes. Unfortunately, the form does not allow the changing of e-mail addresses. So while it’s there teasing us with the possibility, the backend can’t actually update anyone’s e-mail addresses. I think that’s because Manila uses e-mail addresses as unique identifiers for each user, so the e-mail address becomes something like a record number. Instead of overwriting an e-mail address on a record, it sends back an error message indicating it can’t find a record with the new e-mail address.
I’ve also been doing a lot of cleaning out of the membership list by deleting spammers. If you encounter a problem logging in, let me know. It should be fairly easy to register you for membership again.
I did some things to better lock down comments and the discussion group. I doubt that will work to block the spammers because the bots don’t attack via the front end of the blog, but it’s worth a try. I hate restricting access to this weblog because I like having an open forum, but the spammers are just getting too obnoxious.
If my changes are causing problems for you, dear readers, please let me know. If you don’t want to or can’t comment, you can contact me at j k b a u m g a [at] a major search engine or e-mail service . c o m.
