Ok, I've added the Akismet spam filtering tools that Samson's been touting as the ultimate solution to spam here to our 
site. This system monitors comments and contacts. If it works as well as Samson's been saying, maybe I'll get rid of the captcha too. We'll have to see. 
(Need discovered/resolved by Samson.)
Comments:
On Mar 15th, 2007 - 08:26:32 pm, Samson said:
Well I look at it this way, if an author is able to post, they should be
able to delete or edit that post. They should also have control over any
comments attached to it, including the ability to flag them as false
positives if Akismet says they're spam.
This will of course require extra fields to mark ownership. Right now that
isn't possible because the system is built with a single admin in mind.
We really should be discussing stuff like this on Kiasyn's main sandbox
page 
On Mar 15th, 2007 - 08:53:37 pm, Dragona said:
That is true if you are talking aobut adults that are going to be limited admins. But we are talkingabout children, the oldest being 17. It is not like we will not be around to delete/edit/fix posts that we dont approve of. But I don't think the children should be able to. Perhaps it should be done so that when you set an limited admin you can set what they can do. Just edit, just add, just upload, ect...
On Mar 16th, 2007 - 12:18:10 am, Conner said:
You might be right that we should be discussing this on Kiasyn's main sandbox page except for a couple of minor details, Samson: First of all, Kiasyn's already said that he wasn't willing to make what I'm talking about part of Sandbox officially because he wants it to be a blog site and not a community page (apparently my family is a whole community in size). Secondly, I hadn't really brought it up as a topic of discussion per se, it was just an item on my to-do list, but when you asked for details with the suggestion that you might try to tackle the project, well... 
I agree with Dragona that, for mature/responsible admins, even limited ones, there's no real reason they shouldn't be able to delete as well, but for our children, I'd rather allow them to be big enough to add stuff but still be a responsible enough parent that I can oversee what's being deleted after.
In any event, the more thought I put into this, the more I'm forced to admit that forum software, like QSFP, might actually be better suited to my family's uses than the Sandbox anyway. I think everything I want to do here can already be done in QSFP, right down to my 'limited admins' via moderator rights and so forth ..and then it can even be tailored down to the individual as well.
For blogs, I can just establish a seperate forum for each person and they can create a new 'Topic' for each blog post, then folks can comment (reply) to those posts. BBCode is already supported (though html may be less supported).
I can force 'visitors' to register thus eliminating the need for a guestbook but creating the ability for each 'visitor' to create a profile and, since I'll know who each is that way, those who are actually extended family can even be given their own forums too for their blogging pleasure. Each 'admin' (limited, full, or otherwise), as well as each of my guests/visitors, could have their own personally customized signature through their profiles.
If I use a portal/forum like QSFP I can also have a downloads and gallery section easily enough, I get nifty stats and a recent posts list that will show when any of the family has added a new 'blog' or even when someone's added a new 'comment'.
Of course, it'd probably take some significant skinning to make it look more like a blog site for the family than a typical forums, but given time/effort I know I could accomplish that too.
On top of that, I know you'd once before told me that there is a mod for QSF that I should be able to use for QSFP to add an event calendar, so then I'd get that added bonus which was something I'd asked Kiasyn about that he'd said he didn't think would be happening to Sandbox either.
I can still use the pages section of QSFP to add individual web pages for each family member identically to the way I'd do it on here and set each up as a 'tab' on the nav bar there as well... much the way that you've done with some of the extra modules and such that you've added to mudbytes or the way Kayle's done to Malevelant Whisper's QSFP site.
I think the only things I couldn't do as easily there would be to add the akismet (though I think you'd said you were working on adding that to QSFP already, so maybe eventually that'd be there too) and add the pastebin, but I can't add that here either at this point because Kiasyn and you didn't seem to feel a need for one to be in the sandbox site. *shrug* (Well, the calendar module addition might take some doing too since you've told me about it but I've not yet really ever looked into it.)
So, what have I missed that Sandbox currently has or expects to have that I can't replicate in QSFP? Or, for that matter, that I want for my sandbox site that isn't already in QSFP?
On Mar 16th, 2007 - 08:26:09 am, Samson said:
So, what have I missed that Sandbox currently has or expects to have that I can't replicate in QSFP? Or, for that matter, that I want for my sandbox site that isn't already in QSFP?
Well. You do have a point. But keep in mind Sandbox was born out of Kiasyn's needs, not mine or yours. I think he's been quite gracious in what he's accepted for inclusion into 1.0 so far. But part of the benefit of open source is that you can take what someone provides and modify it to suit your needs. The only price paid being that upgrades to future versions become more hassle for you to adapt. And believe me I'm already paying the price for that 
QSFP and Sandbox both share common traits, but I think something on the scale of QSFP is quite a bit more than you would need for a blog site. It will work for the things you want, but you've also already noticed it would take significant effort to mold it into something that doesn't look like a forum.
That being said I'm working on plugin support for Sandbox. I don't know if Kiasyn will accept it or not, but if he does it would make a lot of the extra stuff people may want pretty easy to drop in and "just work". I'm going to be testing it with Akismet as a plugin and have already made progress toward that end. This is something you can't currently do with QSFP.
If you're really looking for more powerful blog software though you might want to take a serious look at setting up Wordpress.
On Mar 16th, 2007 - 11:50:29 pm, Conner said:
No arguments that Kiasyn's created a very cool product, and if I only wanted to use it for myself and Dragona it'd be quite adequate, though I'd still like to be able to have the means to log who my visitors were or at least add a guestbook of some sort for those who were willing to admit they'd visited by had no comments for any of our blogs. But given that I started this endeavor specifically to host blogs for my whole family, and it doesn't appear that Sandbox is likely to ever have all of the features I'd like it to, whereas I already have another free product available that can offer all of what I'm after.. well, I'm willing to give it a try and see if QSFP will do the job for me.
Yes, adapting a full forum/portal package like QSFP for a family blogging site is probably very much overkill, but Dragona and I have spent the day today (and most of last night) trying to set up a new clean install of QSFP 1.3.5 at http://tcdbbs.zapto.org/conner/ specifically to see how feasible it actually is. So far it's going well, though importing all the posts (all 47 posts) and associated comments (all 97 comments, including this one) from here I still forsee as a significant chore, particularly since I plan to also edit each in the database after posting them to adjust their date/time stamps to when they were originally posted and change the author name to credit the original poster where possible. As for the skinning, Dragona's getting to be pretty good at this skinning stuff and it really doesn't have to not look/feel like a forums completely anyway, that'd just make it that much more unique of a site anyway.
I saw that you posted something about that at Kiasyn's Sandbox QSFP site, but haven't had a chance yet today to check it out. What I did see of it in my RSS feed from there it does look pretty neat. In QSFP the closest I can come to that presently appears to be mods and skins.
I am willing to consider Wordpress, but I recall that they were just in the news the other day for having had some sort of major sounding problem (sadly, I don't recall what the problem was now) and their registration process seemed to indicate that they're primarily set up to host your blog site there rather than offering software for download for self-hosting. But I will certainly take a look at what they offer there, especially since I've already registered there anyway in order to get my akismet registration ID for this very sandbox just the other day. (Refer to the initial post that this string of comments is attached to.)
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 12:07:38 am, Conner said:
Ok, I'm not happy with akismet. It flagged that last comment as spam and then when I tried to tell it that it wasn't spam by clicking on the author's name (my own), it responded with:
Notice: Use of undefined constant spam - assumed 'spam' in /opt/lampp/htdocs/conner/sandbox/admin_modules/spam.php on line 36
MySQL error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's created a very cool product, and if I only wanted to use it for myself and Dra' at line 3
Query: INSERT INTO sb_blogcomments (comment_post, comment_author, comment_message, comment_url, comment_date, comment_ip) VALUES (48, 'Conner', (this was followed by the entirety of the post in single quotes)
Ending with:[/i]', 'http://tcdbbs.zapto.org/', 1174107029, '192.168.0.1')
On top of all that mess, it did not move that post from spam to being a comment, so I had to go into phpMyAdmin and manually insert it as a new row in the comments table.
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 02:00:59 pm, Samson said:
Akismet isn't perfect, I never said it was. Neither did their developers. I offer one possible explanation: You filled your comment with a whole lot of links and it's possible it saw that as spammy behavior.
The database insertion error is not good though, I'll have to look into that because it looks like I might have forgotten to do an escape call on the data coming out of the spam table and into the main comment table. Don't blame the filter for that, blame me
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 02:01:55 pm, Samson said:
Oh, and wordpress.com isn't the right spot to download the software. They keep that parked on wordpress.org.
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 07:32:40 pm, Conner said:
I'm sure that it triggered it because it was filled with links. Though in this case it's just my having fun trying to make sure I linked everyone and the products that I was talking about. My one real concern here is that if we fix this I can undesignate it as spam but then I will have to delete one of the two 'comments' since they're identical copies, but if we don't fix it, eventually it will submit itself to wordpress via the akismet and I'll be listed as a spammer in their database.. on the other hand, there is a mild consolation that wordpress was one of the links involved. 
I suppose it's a really good thing for me that I don't have the akismet filtering the actual blog posts, I'd be reported to akismet/wordpress as a spammer long ago. I like using links.
As for blaming you rather than the filter for the database insertion error, I see that you've posted a solution so I'll get that added momentarily, though I really am thinking that, especially given the way Kiasyn has been avoiding your press for when 1.0 is to be released and the fact that he's already nay-say'd quite of few of the things I'd asked for, and has in the past on many occassions now clearly expressed that his disliking for me is strong enough to sway his decisions and behaviours, I am going to be finding another blog solution for my family. I just haven't decided yet whether it will be via QSFP, wordpress, or another solution, though my QSFP experiment is actually coming along rather better than I'd hoped so far, though as much work as we'd put into it already, we haven't touched on the challenge of adding all our existing posts/comments yet. (Some of those were from our respective myspace sites too, so I may never get some of those people registered on my qsfp site either, so hopefully I'll find a way around that too.. and I haven't touched the blogs/comments from my son's myspace either yet.) 
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 08:07:45 pm, Conner said:
Well, your fix solved it, though I still got the following message when I clicked it. (it got posted as the newest comment and since I'd already manually fixed it, I've deleted the extraneous copy at the end.):
Notice: Use of undefined constant spam - assumed 'spam' in /opt/lampp/htdocs/conner/sandbox/admin_modules/spam.php on line 36
On Mar 17th, 2007 - 08:08:40 pm, Conner said:
Course, I'm also still getting Notice: Array to string conversion in /opt/lampp/htdocs/conner/sandbox/modules/Akismet.class.php on line 164 at the top of the page everytime a new comment is posted too.