This is for all you lazy peeps out there. RedAlt has created a WordPress 1.3 Theme Builder, similar to Firdamatic’s Design Tool for the Uninspired Weblogger! Found at ScriptyGoddess.

Jeff has devised a brilliant plan to thwart spammers from dropping comments. I’m all ears since I’ve got WP Blacklist running, but for whatever reason, NO COMMENTS (not even my own) are appearing on my blog right now. Which is better than a spam flood, I guess, but I really do want my cake and I want to eat it too! I’m going to implement this and see what happens.

No sooner did I have my blog back up and running with WordPress than I got hammered with another free-online-casino.com spammer. I deleted over 400 comment notifications from my email inbox this morning. I’m disgusted with this, and not sure what I’m going to do about it. Right now, I’m also having comment issues. You can click on a comment and leave one, but it never shows up. Why the SPAMMER’S COMMENTS ARE GETTING THROUGH remains a mystery. But no one else’s is.

Not that all that many people comment. Meanwhile, I’ve installed Kitten’s Comment Killer in an attempt to keep bandwidth resources down where they belong. They spiked this morning around 3 AM while the devil was doing his handiwork. If you really want to reach me, just send me an email at joni (at) jonimueller (dot) com.

Update: Well, that didn’t work. I get a database error now. (I think because my comment was intercepted and deleted right away.) Tell you what, I’m just going to delete comments and if you guys want to discuss anything on this blog you can just email me, howzat? I’m too tired and too busy to worry about this. It’s a shame the spammers have ruined it for everyone. Why can’t they use this knowledge and energy for something constructive? Bastages.

Update: I removed all plugins except Blacklist, Backup and Restore, CG Amazon, Text Replace, Textile (not using), Topic-Icon, WP-PDA, and Alex King’s Style Switcher. I tried deactivating Kitten’s Spam Killer because it was deleting my comments (due to my IP?!). Just deactivating it didn’t work. I had to delete it from my server. I’ll try to post another comment. This is very frustrating. (Not as frustrating as being locked out of your blog, tho.)

Sara over at Floopie.com wondered what her readers’ favorite Christmas music is. I have to recommend The Gift, featuring Eric Tingstad and Nancy Rumbel. Check it out at Amazon.com.

What a mess! This site’s been down awhile since right after I upgraded from Wuh-Wuh to WP 1.2.1. After I did that, I installed some plugins and then got to work on a couple of new skins. After that, when I tried to login, it locked me out, insisting that the password field is empty! It most certainly wasn’t! The WP Support Forum had a few isolated instances of this, but everyone else’s problems occurred on a IIS server, not an Apache server. Hmm. And this only seems to be an issue with 1.2.1. My testbeds, which are running either Mingus (WP 1.2.0) or WP Alpha 1.3, are not having this problem. I got the bright idea to just copy the wp-login.php file from the Mingus zip set over the 1.2.1 version. Voila! I’m baaaack!!!