§IP Blocks.

So, you've got a weblog. And visitors. And they react to your entries. Now, you don't mind a little discussion every now and then, but sometimes visitors just go too far, and you'd rather not see them commenting on your site again.

Luckily for you, most people nowadays surf the web from high-speed cable- nor xdsl-connections with a fixed IP-address. This means that, by blocking the IP-address of the culprit, you can prevent him (or her) from posting to your site.

Handling IP-blocks is handled in two places: You can single-click-ban a single IP or an IP range from the edit comments page, and you can review your banned IP's and manually add new ones in the IP Blocks page in the Administration section of Pivot.

§Single Click Banning

Single click banning is easy: when you logon to Pivot, you see the last 5 entries and the last 5 comments in the overview page. [** add screenshot] If the offensive comment is within these last 5 comments, click it. If the unwanted comment has disappeared from the list yet, but belongs to one of the 5 latest entries, click the link with the number of comments in the # commentscolumn in the recent entries list on the overview page. If the entry to which the comment belongs to is older than that, navigate to it via the Articles section in the menu, and click the link with the number of comments in the # commentscolumn.

Scroll to the comment and click either Block IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx or Block IP Range xxx.xxx.xxx.*. The latter will not only block the IP-address of the nasty commenter, but also the whole network that he came from. Generally, this is not a good idea: most likely this will also block innocent visitors commenting on your site. It's best to leave the Block IP Range option alone unless you know what you're doing.

That's it! The IP is from now on blocked, and this unfriendly visitor can view your articles, but no longer comment on them. To remind you of what you did, the comment will appear struck out in the list. It will no longer be in the comments on your site though.

§Reviewing IP Blocks

To see which IP's have been blocked, go to Administration, Maintenance, IP Blocks. [** add screenshot] Here, you can manually add and remove addresses to the list. Pivot comes with several adresses and networks of so-called comment spammers already blocked, and unless you like your comments filled up with spam, it's best to leave these alone.