The inevitable must be faced. My current means of serving up slopulous writing in this space -- Movable Type Version 2.21 -- is simply no match for the onslaught of comment spam.

The IP blocking feature is little proof against the spammers, who seem easily able to fool my pathetic attempts to goaltend. And while I can, if vigilant, wash off the accumulating adverticrud on a daily basis, I don't have time for such attentiveness. The result of a week's inattention has been the insane accumulation of ads for grey- market get-it-up potions, virtual locations for gambling with somewhat less virtual money, Glengarry-ish investment cons, and, of course, lewd enticements ranging from shrugworthy to loathsome.

Most of it's gone now, although tomorrow will no doubt bring a fresh infusion of sludge.

So, I figure I need to either

1. Upgrade to Movable Type 3.1 and start using TypeKey, or
2. Find Something Else

I've been hesitant to do this for a number of reasons. In the first place, I'm not at all skilled in that world of actually getting applications to work and so forth. George W. Bush knows more about Shiite clerical politics than I do about this stuff. I've had one run-in with an error that nearly wiped my weblog off of my hosted space, and so doing a reinstall of a new version of MT or another application feels like a lot of work and a lot of opportunities to get something wrong.

In the second place, the free version of MT 3.1 limits your weblog to one author. As you may have noticed, the multi-author feature (which used to be in the free versions of Movable Type) comes in handy when one of our doughty Guest Quizmasters volunteers to step in of a Friday. And while I could shell out the requisite seventy bucks for the paid version (which includes multi-authoring), I'm not sure it's worth the price, given that that's the only thing I'd be paying for.

I know there are other applications (like Textpattern or Expression Engine) which might serve as well or better.

In case it isn't clear, I'm soliciting advice and possibly a little help getting through a rebuild -- should the Wombatfile move to MT 3.1 free version immediately, is the paid version worth it for lots of reasons I don't know about, does TypeKey even work well (and will its registration requirement drive away Friday participants?) Or are there better options for bringing the Wombat up to date and saying goodbye to its unwanted commercial sponsors?