Comment moderation in WP 1.0 is a giant step in the direction of reducing comment spam. I had used a manual method of weeding out comment spam (by going through all comments long after they were posted and had made some damage) for some time, but WP 1.0 takes it one step further. With comment moderation turned on, a message is posted above the comments, which tells the readers that moderation is turned on and the comments posted will not show up on the blog until it is approved by the admin of the blog (which is a deterrent to comment spam by itself). Every time a comment is posted on your blog, you get an email notification (which can be turned on or off) to approve the comment that is posted. You can approve or delete comments by bulk or singly. I envision checking my blog once a day […]

Because of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, also known as C.O.P.P.A. (or COPPA), it’s illegal to collect personal information from people under the age of 13. This means it’s very important to verify the age of anyone who enters such information into your Web site, but the problem with verifying ages is that the verification properties change every day because we get older every day. Here’s a little function that’s written in PHP and will dynamically check user age input in real time and let you know if you are within the law to collect information about this user. I’ve used this particular piece of code for a few years and it’s a great toolbox piece when you’re collecting user information on your website because it keeps you legal! < ?php /* Name: coppa_check($day, $month, $year) Author: Jason DeFillippo Description: This is a down and dirty COPPA age verifier. […]