If you have a TypePad blog, here’s some good news on what Six Apart is planning to implement as part of major improvements in everyone’s efforts to combat comment and trackback spam.
An announcement yesterday on the Everything TypePad support site includes this news about enhancements Six Apart is working on:
- First, we’ll provide support for TypeKey-based comment authentication. TypeKey is a service that lets you confidently identify a particular commenter, and it is a free service. We’ve supported TypeKey comment authentication in Movable Type for more than a year now, and customers who have implemented TypeKey on their weblogs have virtually eliminated comment spam from their weblogs.
Second, we’ll add the ability for you to moderate comments and trackbacks. You’ll be able to pre-screen comments and trackbacks and approve them before they appear on your published weblog.
Finally, on top of the authentication and moderation functionality, we’re working on a greatly enhanced set of screens in TypePad for managing comments and trackbacks. The goal of the improvements is to make it easier to scan and quickly take action on new comment activity, including deleting comments, approving or deleting moderated commenters, or banning unwanted commenters from your site.
Great news! I especially like the idea of TypeKey authentication. I’ve long wondered by this hasn’t been implement for TypePad.
And while I’m not a fan of comment moderation, it’s good to know that I will have the option to implement it if I wanted to. Right now, if anyone with a TypePad blog gets hit by, say, a comment spam attack, all you can really do is switch off commenting completely.
Related NevOn posts:
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.