I’ve been wanting to update my blog for a while, adding features, revamping menus, and giving the whole site a fresh look. With my surgery date coming up, it feels even more urgent, but I can’t seem to find a ready-made theme I like, and there’s no time to design a custom one before July 1st. I’ve thought about switching to a new CMS (content management system), but that’s just not in the budget right now.  

Additionally, I really need to do something about the comment spam. I am getting 100s of spam posts every day. To reduce the damage, I have things set so that I am required to approve all comments, but the number of spam comments is so overwhelming I must do a daily bulk delete and I worry real comments are getting caught up in that. There is a third-party antispam service, but that will cost me more money I can’t afford right now. 

This morning, I made change that now requires you to have a user account to post a comment which I hope will reduce the spam some. This is not something I wanted to do, because some of the topics I talk about non this blog are deeply personal not only to me, but to the readers. I wanted a commenter, epically someone who is looking for advice on their own situation, to have the option to remain anonymous. This option is currently gone. 

If I don’t move the site to a new CMS I will find a way to get the third-party antispam after the surgery so I can remove the requirement for a user account.  I thought they had a free personal edition of the anti-spam, but it looks like that is a bait and switch scam.

UPDATE (05-28-2025): I spoke to the third-party antispam company. My account had been suspended because the site was marked as commercial and I had not paid for the service. This has been fixed, so I can now apply for the free license. I will be doing this later today.