Good morning, fellow Bravenetters!  Today, we're going to talk about taking control of your journal (and any services you have attached to it) and getting a grip on spam. 


Filter Out the Garbage

We've all had this problem at one time or another, and Bravenet has worked very hard to develop a tool that will help us fight this pesky pain-in-the-butt. I don't see that we'll be forever free of it, but the Spam Filter the Bravenet team built for us sure does make a difference, I can tell you that.  Here's how you use it:

1.  Log in to your Bravenet account, select the Web Tools tab, and then select "Blog."

2.  Scroll down until you see "Manage Spam" or "Enable Spam Filter" and click that link.

3.  Now, if you've already enabled the spam filter, you may see a page full of all the comments that have been made on your posts.  To make that page go away, go through each comment, and select the right button (left button will mark the comment as spam, and it won't be allowed through again). To be sure, just look at the top of the table, and you'll see two choices: "Spam" and "Not Spam."

4.  When you're finished, make sure you click the "Update" button on the bottom left corner, otherwise, your choices won't be recorded by the filter. If you have more than one page of uncategorized comments, repeat this process for each page, making sure you click "Update" at the end of each page.

5.  If you come across spam comments, highlight the IP address, copy it, and paste it into Notepad (or whatever you choose).  Keep this available, as you'll need it for the next part of your work.


Stop Spammers at the Door

Bravenet has given us the ability to prevent people from using our Bravenet services.  It's called IP Banning, and let me tell you, this tool is awesome. And when you use it in conjuction with the Spam Filter, spammers are stopped cold before they can even get their virtual foot in the door.  Here's what you do:

1.  From your journal page, scroll down to the Tools section, select IP Banning, and click the link.  Here, you will find two boxes:  the first one will tell you the name of the host server which provides the spammer with the IP address.  The second box, further down, allows you to block the IP.

2.  Copy and paste the IP you want to ban into the second box, and click the button beside it.

3.  To further ensure you won't be bothered by the person with that IP,  delete the last three digits on the IP and put a zero there.  This will cover the entire range for that particular IP, rather than just that IP.  You want to do this, because IP addresses are easy to change, these days, so rather than focusing on just one at a time, replacing the last three digits with a zero helps widen the net, so to speak, so you catch more of these nasties at one time. 

4.  When you've finished, be sure to update, and voila, you're free!


Take Back Your Tagboard

Many of us have had issues with spammers hitting our tagboards. This is, perhaps, the biggest reason why many people have simply removed their Tagboards.  But, you can take back your Tagboard.  Here's how:

1.  From your journal page, scroll down until you see the Manage Tagboard link. Click that link.

2.  You will see a link that says "Delete entries from your tagboard" (or words to that effect) near the top of the page.  Click that link.

3.  Now, you can go through the entries, highlight and copy the IP addresses of the spammers (do this before you delete them), paste them into your Notepad, and then delete them from your Tagboard.  Once you've deleted them, you can go back to your journal page and use the IP Banning tool.

Taking control of your journal might be time-consuming at first, but believe me when I say that it's worth every minute.  Being virtually free of spam has made my Bravenet experience soooooo much more fun, and I know that if you use these tools, you'll feel a lot better, too.

I hope this tutorial has helped you.  Please feel free to comment on this or any other post made here at the Bravenet Community Blog.  Your feedback is most appreciated, and suggestions and questions are always welcomed.

NOTE:  If you have suggestions on how this blog can be improved, please use the Suggestion Box near the top of the page.

Have a great day, everyone, and thanks for dropping by!