Required input fields in Spamblock
Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 11:01 am
Hi everyone,
I'm having a bit of trouble with the input-field settings in the Spamblock plug-in. If I set them to "name, email, url, comment", then I get inundated with bogus comments (= spam). If I add the ReplyTo field to the required fields, then I don't get any comments at all.
I initially thought the lack of comments was just due to my blog being new and not widely known, but a colleague of mine contacted me at the weekend to say he had actually been trying to post a comment, but the blog wouldn't let him. He said this:
"Well, I updated my comment (below) but still can't get it on. The error message says " You did not specify the replyTo field! Your comment could not be added because comments for this entry have either been disabled, you entered invalid data, or your comment was caught by anti-spam measures." But "Reply to" says "Top level" w/ no other option, so I'm confused." [And this is a person who is an experienced software engineer as well as a fellow translator.]
Well, there are two points on my mind here. First of all, as far as I can tell (from trying it out myself), if I select "ReplyTo" as a required input field, then the message my colleague mentioned appears in red each time you try and post a comment. This is both bewildering and annoying because the visitor can see the words "top level" in the entry field, so a setting seems to have been made, yet it doesn't work. In a new blog post without any comments, this is all you can see in the drop-down field, and s9y won't let you enter anything yourself. So you're stuck! And will eventually give up trying to post a comment...
Apart from that (and as an aside), why does the ReplyTo field display the words "Top Level"? I don't think this is intuitive to many visitors who don't program themselves; I would personally expect the name of the blog entry to be inserted (and expect this to be done automatically, not manually) since that is what the visitor wants to reply to/comment on. If this can't be changed at the moment, then the words "Top Level" ought to be explained to visitors, if only very briefly. Or they ought to be substituted by "blog post" or something just as clear. After all, this is what "top level" means, and it's more intuitive to laymen than thinking in terms of a hierarchical information structure.
Can anyone advise me what to do to remedy/improve the situation? Have I overlooked something in the settings or is there something wrong with the plug-in? (-> When will it be fixed?) Do I need to change/delete anything in serendipity_event_spamblock.php? Can I change the words "top level" myself to something more intuitive? If so, in what part of which file?
I'm using v1.7.3 of s9y on an Apache server with various versions of PHP installed, the latest being 5.3.18.
Regards
Carl
I'm having a bit of trouble with the input-field settings in the Spamblock plug-in. If I set them to "name, email, url, comment", then I get inundated with bogus comments (= spam). If I add the ReplyTo field to the required fields, then I don't get any comments at all.
I initially thought the lack of comments was just due to my blog being new and not widely known, but a colleague of mine contacted me at the weekend to say he had actually been trying to post a comment, but the blog wouldn't let him. He said this:
"Well, I updated my comment (below) but still can't get it on. The error message says " You did not specify the replyTo field! Your comment could not be added because comments for this entry have either been disabled, you entered invalid data, or your comment was caught by anti-spam measures." But "Reply to" says "Top level" w/ no other option, so I'm confused." [And this is a person who is an experienced software engineer as well as a fellow translator.]
Well, there are two points on my mind here. First of all, as far as I can tell (from trying it out myself), if I select "ReplyTo" as a required input field, then the message my colleague mentioned appears in red each time you try and post a comment. This is both bewildering and annoying because the visitor can see the words "top level" in the entry field, so a setting seems to have been made, yet it doesn't work. In a new blog post without any comments, this is all you can see in the drop-down field, and s9y won't let you enter anything yourself. So you're stuck! And will eventually give up trying to post a comment...
Apart from that (and as an aside), why does the ReplyTo field display the words "Top Level"? I don't think this is intuitive to many visitors who don't program themselves; I would personally expect the name of the blog entry to be inserted (and expect this to be done automatically, not manually) since that is what the visitor wants to reply to/comment on. If this can't be changed at the moment, then the words "Top Level" ought to be explained to visitors, if only very briefly. Or they ought to be substituted by "blog post" or something just as clear. After all, this is what "top level" means, and it's more intuitive to laymen than thinking in terms of a hierarchical information structure.
Can anyone advise me what to do to remedy/improve the situation? Have I overlooked something in the settings or is there something wrong with the plug-in? (-> When will it be fixed?) Do I need to change/delete anything in serendipity_event_spamblock.php? Can I change the words "top level" myself to something more intuitive? If so, in what part of which file?
I'm using v1.7.3 of s9y on an Apache server with various versions of PHP installed, the latest being 5.3.18.
Regards
Carl