spam, spam bots, and the like

Email spam, comment spam, bot automated user registrations, you name it – are a pest. So far we’ve been pretty lucky with relatively few of these pests taking note of this blog, but as of late there has been a substantial uptick. With ChipCrunch gaining popularity and ever more link-backs from other sites and blogs, this was to be expected. As such we spent this last weekend integrating Captcha protection for new user registration and lost password retrieval. For now we left the contact form unprotected, just in case you need to notify us that there is a problem with the Captcha protection. Big thanks go out to Walter Cederic who wrote the Captcha plugin that we then modified a little to work better with this site.

We also took some time to filter our existing registered user list and remove those that are known to have been created by automated bots. We’re pretty sure we did not remove any real users, but if so please accept our apologies – the process was somewhat manual and most likely not perfect. Since we were already working on the site, we also fixed a couple of small rendering bugs that a few users have reported over time. Hopefully that will lead to a better overall experience for all of you. As always, we are open to any feedback or criticism so please don’t hesitate in contacting us.