A System Update was performed on the BlogHarbor network overnight. We're very happy to announce significant enhancements to our commenting system, as well as additional protection against trackback and comment spam. The highlights of the upgrade are listed on this page.

Comment and Trackback Moderation
BlogHarbor now allows for blog publishers to moderate comments and trackbacks. If Moderation is enabled, comments or Trackbacks will not be immediately posted to a blog until the Publisher approves them. Blog readers who post a comment on a blog with Moderation enabled will see a message when the comment is accepted.

Publishers can choose never to moderate Comments and Trackbacks, to moderate only those suspected of being spam, or to always moderate. Publishers will be notified by email of comments in their moderation queue. The email notification is a system message sent to the email address configured for the Publisher in the Blog Profile; the message indicates the number of items queued for moderation. Moderation Queue notifications themselves are queued, and sent every 30 minutes. The content of this queue notification is currently not configurable.

Our Publisher's manual has additional information on moderating comments and trackbacks here:

• Moderating comments
• Moderating trackbacks

Spam Protection Settings
A new page called Spam Protection Settings has been added to the control panel at Settings & Security -> Publishing Defaults. The following spam protection settings are available from this page:

• Anonymous Comments
• Comment Verification
• Comment Moderation
• Trackback Moderation
• No Follow

Anonymous Comments have been significantly improved; readers who do not have a Reader Account can now leave contact information including their Name, Email, and URL along with their comment. Their Name and URL will be displayed on the comment, and the email address will be shown in the control panel. Read Allowing anonymous comments for more information.

Additional options are also available for Comment Verification. Publishers can now choose to disable Comment Verification for Logged-in Readers. Comment verification will always required for anonymous commenters and on all trial accounts.

For more information on the new Spam Protection Settings, please see these pages in the Publisher's Manual:

• Spam Protection Settings
• Specifying spam protection settings
• Comment moderation to limit spam
• Trackback moderation to limit spam
• Blocking referrers to limit spam

Downloadable Server Logs Now Available
We now offer the ability for publishers to download a server log file. The statistics file is a raw Apache log file with all confidential information removed. The downloadable file will be available for each day in a 7 day rotating cycle. See the manual page Download Web Server Log for more information.

Architectural Changes
Our internal database tables were modified to ensure that the frequently updated tables are structured more efficiently.

Rate Limiting
Limits were added to the number of Categories, Comments, Trackbacks, Articles, and Moblogs per blog. We expect that these limits will not affect legitimate publishers but will prevent spammers from abusing our system.

Referer Blocking
An additional option has been added to the Referer statistics page within the Site Stats section of the control panel. It is now possible to add Referers to the blog firewall via a Delete and Block button.

This ability to block unwanted referers will enable you to reduce the effects of referer spammers. Visitors who are blocked from will now see an "Access Denied" error message when attempting to access your site via a link from a site on your Firewall.