And from the sins of The Great Regency War, three kingdoms arose, heralding a grim future of depravation. Ar Aesthur came to be from the will to bring famine to its creator's kin. Vascony was the lair of all human ire and bloodlust. Cathelony became the incarnation of greed... Excerpt from the Chronicle of Marok (Lusean translation). |
Captcha
Fri, 08/28/2009 - 17:43 | 
mingosI realised that the site had very little activity after the switch to Drupal and decided to investigate this a little bit. I found out that registering as a new user was quite difficult due to an extremely difficult captcha. I changed it to a simpler one. Also, anonymous users can now post moderated comments as well (but need to overcome a captcha challenge).
I hope this helps. Please leave your comments regarding the functionality aspects of the site so that I can consider making it more attractive and easier to use. Thanks in advance.
[EDIT] After configuring anonymous comments, I went to the movies. When I got back, I saw that my comment approval queue was stuffed with 150 spam posts. It reached 200 before I solved the issue. I regret to inform that this site is visited by spambots too frequently, making normal users' lives a pain. I'm sorry you have to pay the price of the assholes leaving their annoying dumps all around the internet. The captchas now appear everywhere, even if you got one right. They're also more difficult. I'm sorry again, but I can't cope with nearly 100 spam posts per hour... x_x
[EDIT2] Alright, that's it. Anonymous users can only access the content now, nothing else. No comments are possible without logging in. Also, the use of the contact form has been restricted. I'm very sorry, but all this more advanced captcha managed to do was to limit the frequency of spam posts from 100 per hour to around 30, but it's still not good enough... I hate the fact that it's the legitimate users who have to pay for this, but there seems to no other way...
[EDIT3] This is sick! The blog has trackbacks enabled and the bloody spammers took advantage of that as well to post tons of spam! I've just deleted all trackback messages and disabled trackbacks for good. You know, this is one of those situation when you start thinking about making a closed community portal, accessible only for invited users... Bah, let's see what the spammers come up with this time...
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Well, mainly it was the inconvenience of registering for yet another site. The old blog let me use my google account, which was very convenient!
I'm ashamed to say, but I registered and then forgot about it... (Firefox didn't remember the password so I reset it now.) and my inertia prevented me from registering again :P
Other than the trouble of registering, the site is fantastic! It's just that relative to the convenience of using my google account, yes, it's inconvenient.
Thanks, Jotaf.
Yes, I am aware that having to register is inconvenient, but I guess that's a one-time inconvenience only. Once you tell Firefox (or Chrome, or whatever) to remember you login and password, you just appear logged in each time you visit the site, which is very convenient. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a possibility to integrate Drupal with Google accounts :(.
I'm glad you like the site. It's stagnated at the moment, but there's still hell of a lot of work to do, so be prepared to see much, much more at some point. Of course, most of the missing content depends heavily on the development state of UR, and I haven't touched it for some time ;).
No problem, just do whatever you feel like ;) Personally, I can't wait to see some screenshots of new UR gameplay!
I never realized that a registration process could mean the difference between having lots of feedback from comments and almost none. As I said, I have no problems with it; but if you feel that it's a limitation, you could always maintain the current structure of the site and replace the blog with a more conventional one (like your old blog).
Yeah, I could as well continue the Blogspot progress blog, but I like having everything in one place. That's one address less to remember, you know. Plus, I'm waiting for Everyblog security update (it's got a security fault atm) so I can replace the current blog with something more advanced (Drupal core Blog module isn't the fanciest thing on Earth, I admit). Everyblog also allowe multiple blogs from the same user, functionality which I currently lack.
I was thinking about making a new video and release a new tech demo in August, but finally got involved into another project and left UR alone for a while. I'll be back to it, just can't say when :).