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People are noting (on the main site, not the forum site) that the “Name,” “E-mail address”, and “URL” fields for making a comment, which are normally prepopulated with the last values you used on whatever computer you’re using, are coming up prepopulated with other people’s identities. This is obviously annoying, and, if people’s e-mail addresses are being exposed, is in contradiction with my policy of not making poster’s e-mail addresses public. I am trying to figure out the problem; please use this post to describe exactly what it is you’re seeing. Be sure to tell me what browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) and what operating system (Windows XP, Windows 98, Mac OS X, etc.) you’re using.

(WARNING: Boring technical stuff to follow! If this stuff doesn’t interest you, stop reading now! But if you want to know my theory about why this is happening, read on.) The reason I did the technical fiddling I did last weekend was because I was getting warnings from my ISP that my site was eating up too much server resources. Basically, WordPress (the software that runs my site) stores all the information about posts, comments, etc. in a database, and constructs the Web pages you see dynamically every time you access the site. When you have as many visitors as I do, this can put quite a strain on the computer running your Web site. What I did was add a caching feature to WordPress. Now, instead of building each Web page from scratch time someone accesses it, WordPress builds a static version of the page once and then presents that static version to anyone who comes along until the page changes. This should cut my server load dramatically. However, it appears that in the process, the prepopulated values in the comment fields are also being stored on these static pages! I’m going to see what I can do about changing this. It may be that you will have to re-enter your name every time you want to comment; my primary goal is to stop other people’s information from coming up.

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For all of you who participate in the forums: I’m changing the permissions so that you will only be able to read messages if you are a registered user. Apologies in advance if this is an incovenience, but I am having some mysetrious server issues that I hope this will fix. Feel free to write me if this puzzles you. Registering as a forum user is still of course free.

Update: Sorry for any confusion: when I talking about the forum, I’m talking about the Comics Curmudgeon community forum, not the comments you can add to individual blog posts of mine. You don’t need to register to put comments on the main part of the site; you do have to register now to view the forum site.

Update 2: I’ve also updated my install of WordPress (the software that runs the blog part of this operation) from 1.5 to 2.0.2. This appears to have gone remarkably smoothly (much more so than the last big upgrade), but if anyone out there notices problems with the blog, please let me know. I’ve also installed a new, much more powerful comment-spam removal package, called Spam Karma, which for the most part allows me to dispense with the “see it before you say it” screen. If your post is suspected of being spam, you may be asked to prove that you’re a real person by entering a “catchpa” code — basically, you’ll be shown a series of numbers and letters and asked to enter them into a box. This shouldn’t happen too often, as Spam Karma learns over time, and it will figure out that you’re not a spambot in short order.

If you’re curious about the motivation for this flurry of late-night activity (warning: technical geekery aheady), my ISP just told me that either my blog or my forum software was apparently eating up a lot of PHP resources on the server. I took some steps to reduce the amount of work PHP had to do — that’s where the more effective spam-killing comes in, and the restriction of the forums site to registered users (since every time a non-registered user looked at the forums, PHP had to work to render everything). As a precaution, I also updated PHPBB and WordPress to the most recent and secure versions. I’m not sure if this actually has solved the problem. If anyone is experienced on why WordPress and/or PHPBB might suddenly be forking a lot of PHP processes, I’d love to hear it.

Update 3: OK, I’ve re-added the ability to “See It Before You Say It” because some people liked it. It’s no longer mandatory, however.

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I’m back, everybody! Our week in Hawaii was a bit soggy at times, but I shan’t complain further about it. At least we weren’t on Oahu, with the open rivers of sewage and the hey hey.

But now I’m back and at your Curmudgeoning disposal. And hey, did I miss you guys?