To go along with the new webhost and the new Wordpress version, I’ve added new comment- and trackback-spam catcher plugins to help filter out the trash that’s been collecting.  While I wasn’t looking, the old spam-collection stuff had racked up sixty-five thousand spams.  Hopefully the new trackback-spam verification and the javascript comment-spam checker will weed out some of those.

I’ve also set up OpenID.  I thought it was pretty lame that you have to register and create an account on every single site on the internet just to drop in a comment, so when OpenID came along I was pretty enthusiastic about it.

OpenID works on a system of trusted authorities.  Rather than every site having to redo the job of keeping track of your username and password and profile and all that, you just login using your OpenID url, which is probably the URL for your Livejournal or your AOL profile or your Technorati account.  Then the site asks Livejournal (or whoever your provider is) if you are who you say you are.  You may have to login over there and then get redirected back here.  If you’re already logged in, it just happens in the background.

You may already have an OpenID whether you realize it or not: Since SixApart was pretty much behind the OpenID concept, LiveJournal and Vox both provide OpenID logins, and so do a ton of the other LJ spinoffs like DeadJournal.  So do AOL, Yahoo, Technorati, Smugmug, and all the blogs hosted by Wordpress.com.  I didn’t have an account at any of those, so I got my own OpenID through MyOpenID.com and I use my url here as my OpenID login, though I could’ve gone through a zillion other providers.

Of course, if you don’t want to bother with any of that, you can still just register here to comment.  But why would you?