There’s a reason why I don’t have a truly real estate marketing post today.  I have been unable to update my blog because of a change to the anti-spam plug-in, Bad Behavior.

I try not to get on a soapbox on this blog, but I just can’t help myself tonight.  Yes, it’s about midnight and I’ve been going nuts with this blog all evening.

Bad Behavior is a great anti-spam plug in for Wordpress blogs.  However, there really ought to be a better way for the developers to do business.  Yes, I realize this is free software, but the developers have to know that people do come to rely on it.

In trying to update the blog today, I was kicked out to an error page that told me my IP address was identified as a spam site.  The page gave me nothing useful about how to fix the problem, and suggested that I ask for assistance at a non-existent e-mail address under my domain name.  It looked to me like a hacker had gotten into the site or my computer.

I was going crazy doing virus scans, contacting my host, and trying to figure out who or what was behind the problem.  My host finally figured out that it was a Bad Behavior problem and came across this post on the Bad Behavior blog.  And, to top it all off, when I land on that site, my anti-virus software tells me that the site has a dangerous web advertisement on it!

The problem can be fixed by uploading a new release, which my host did for me.  You can get the download at the post I noted above.  And, based on the comments on the developer’s site, I’m not the only one who has been going through this.

So, if you’re having a problem with your Wordpress blog, this could be the cause of it.  And, Michael Hampton, if you’re listening, at a minimum, couldn’t the error page that is initially displayed be updated with a link to your post with the download fix?

Also, many thanks to Vince at www.HostRefugee.com for the research and fix on the problem.  If you’re looking for a new web host, you might want to check out Host Refugee.

Thus ends my rant for the day.

Update:  Michael Hampton has been very responsive to this problem.  I’ve been monitoring the post on his blog.  He has updated the error page to indicate that Bad Behavior is involved, and he said he would be updating the Bad Behavior information on the Wordpress.org site.  So, if you’re running Wordpress 2.3.1, you’ll get a notification of an available update on the Plugins page once those updates are being completed.  Thanks Michael!