The Comments feature on this site has done more to shape how I manage this site than just about anything else -- beyond my own whims, of course.

Thanks to comments, I can occasionally enjoy an interactive dialog with readers and a public forum on shared topics of interest. There continues to be an interesting conversation regarding gingiva grafts, for example, for any of my readers who might have any cause to be concerned about oral surgery.

That said, it turns out that the MovableType engine, which I use as my content management system, is not robust enough at present to handle the kind of comment junk attacks my site to which my site occasionally falls victim. Every once in a while, some spamtard or other will barrage my site with literally hundreds (and, one time, around a thousand) of requests to post bogus comments at a time. My web server has had a hard time with this, and has generally reacted by curling up into the fetal position and crying like Sally Struthers after the all-you-can-eat buffet has closed.

This has left me seriously considering either switching to another content management system (anyone out there have any experience with Wordpress?), which would be a great deal of work given how big this site is, or switching to one of those "free" services like Livejournal or Blogger or WhateverSpaces, which are big and (presumably) bullet-proof but which would also be a pain in the nether regions and would entail the loss of control I have over the format of my site.

[I could also shut down the comment feature, but I don't want to do that.]

Before doing anything drastic along those lines, however, I've decided to give MovableType on my server here one more shot. I've installed some new modules that should help with the barrage attacks themselves, and I've opened comments back up. I still need to tweak the formatting of the comment windows -- sorry about the uglitude there -- but I hope you'll feel free, once again, to post your responses to my recent entries.

Oh, and I'm going to start shutting down comments on any old posts that haven't seen any comments posted in a while. This is a tedious process for me, but it will also help to shut down on those barrage attacks.

As an interesting consequence, I'm re-reading older posts as I go along, closing down the comment feature on older entries (MovableType won't let me edit the comment feature in bulk. Grrr). Wow, what a long way this site and I have come since I first went to a CMS six years ago. Yikes.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

[PS: thanks, Greg Z., for being the lone brave sole who was willing to register with TypeKey to post comments while I was using their authentication tool. Too bad their tool didn't solve my comment attack woes. It did, however, discourage any other legit readers from posting their comments. Yee-ha.]