I just upgraded my blog software from MovableType 2.65 to 3.17. The primary reason for the upgrade was to be able to try out a new plugin to fight blog spam called SpamLookup. I used to use an old version of MT-Blacklist, but decided I was still spending too much time deleting the blog spam that got through.

Rather than just maintaining a list of blocked URLs, SpamLookup actually checks comment/trackback IP addresses against some DNSBLs to see if the user/script is using a known bad IP or an open HTTP proxy. If the IP address looks all right, SpamLookup check any URLs in the comment/trackback against SURBL to see if the URLs are known to be advertized in SPAM.

I'm hoping SpamLookup will lessen the manual burden of deleting comment spam, but it's effectiveness remains to be seen. I haven't had a major comment spam attack yet, so I'll just wait a few hours :)

Even if SpamLookup doesn't work any better than MT-Blacklist, MovableType 3.17's comment moderation and NoFollow features should at least prevent the spams from showing up on my site and boosting the spammer's rank on Google.

Update: After about 18 hours of operation, SpamLookup has blocked 73 comment spams (a fairly light load actually). It took me a few hours to get the configuration the way I wanted it and to realize I had to clear the cache that was using the old settings. After that, it's been completely hands off and working flawlessly.