This is the first test of the Spam Guard (for blogs). Before being able to leave a comment on this blog, you now have to copy a number (from an image) into a text box. Feel free to give it a try : ) It shouldn't allow the post if you don't type in the right code. At the moment the image isn't auto-generated, but obviously that won't be much of a trick - gif, swf or otherwise. If there are no kinks I'll submit this to the people at .Text if they are interested. It is REALLY easy to put this type of thing into blog software - in fact the biggest problem I had was that I am one version behind them with Visual Studio, so it took a bit of fussing to load their solution.

Essentially you just insert the image, field, and instructions stubs into the page that generates the comment. Then you generate an image based on a random number, and save it to the server. The comment page then gets displayed. When the comment is submitted, the submitted Spam Guard field is compared with the previously generated number, and the comment will only be added if there is a match. To be honest, you could probably skip the whole image thing, and just have the instructions say something like: "type 'no spam' into the following textbox", or "What is two plus 3?".

If anyone is having trouble posting, my e-mail is robin@debreuil.com...

Thanks to aSH and Brajeshwar for all their input : ).