
Show HN: Ursprung, a complete blog without a back end area - onli
https://onli.github.io/ursprung/
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fiatjaf
With little modification of the base HTML template you'll be able to use all
themes from
[http://websitesfortrello.github.io/classless/](http://websitesfortrello.github.io/classless/).
It would be great if you could contribute there too.

~~~
onli
I will look into it. I don't oversee yet how much work that would be, but to
offer a real design selection and not just a design mechanism is something I
wished for, this might be it. Thanks for the link.

~~~
fiatjaf
Even if you find it is not useful, please leave some comments about what you
think of the idea and how it could be improved.

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fiatjaf
How does that "Bayes filter" helps fighting spam? I'm interested.

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onli
That is based on the experience with a plugin I wrote before for another,
classical PHP blog engine, serendipity.

It is basically the same method used for email spam filters (though that are
not always bayes filters anymore). Users mark comments as spam or ham, and
when a new comment arrives you look at the words in it, calculate their
spamminness rating using the bayes algorithm, and can then predict whether a
comment is spam or not.

In blogs that works great. Ursprung combines that with a honeypot, a field
hidden with css in the comment form that if filled out will dismiss the
comment.

~~~
fiatjaf
I have a small helpdesk software[1] that can sometimes get an awfully
enourmous amount of spam. It is behind Mailgun, so it should get spam
protection from Mailgun, but that doesn't really works, so I wander what could
I do to prevent spam myself.

After reading about the Gmail spam protection I thought it was impossible to
do anything against spam, because what Gmail does is not really possible to
common people.

So I would like to know from you, that is much more experienced than I, what
are my possibilities?

Also, isn't there a hosted service, SaaS or something, that offers filters and
allow for feedback (users marking messages as spam), like a pay-as-you-go
trained Bayes filter?

[1]: [https://boardthreads.com](https://boardthreads.com)

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onli
That's right, you can't beat the scale of gmail.

But you can run a filter yourself, and because your personal filter will be
more adapted to the specific spam you get, the results can be suprisingly
good. [https://spamassassin.apache.org/](https://spamassassin.apache.org/) is
one of the old ways of doing that, it should work fine for your scenario.

> _Also, isn 't there a hosted service, SaaS or something, that offers filters
> and allow for feedback (users marking messages as spam), like a pay-as-you-
> go trained Bayes filter?_

Yes, tailored for blog-comments even. It is called akismet and run by
Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, see
[https://akismet.com/](https://akismet.com/). It is very effective and a good
solution without costs if you are willing to give the comment data to an US-
entity, which is very critical in Europe where I live. Though you can't train
it yourself from outside of Wordpress, to my knowledge.

For mails there are several spam filter services, like
[http://www.mailroute.net/](http://www.mailroute.net/), but I do not have any
experience with them.

~~~
fiatjaf
I think Mailgun runs SpamAssassin on their side, but that's what fails so
heavily.

~~~
onli
When you train it yourself this could be a different story. However, I do not
use a spam filter for mails anymore and can't be absolutely sure. I just know
that the idea can work fine for blog comments and their spam.

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toXel
This is awesome!

Looks like a nice alternative to ghost.

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onli
Thanks!

I think I started before Ghost existed, but it went in a similar direction
later on, possible that it influenced me. The big differences apart from the
programming would be that there is no backend, that it is a way smaller
project, that it has more features of a real blog at the same time (comments,
trackbacks and pingbacks) while not having the cool editor.

------
fiatjaf
What do you mean with "there's no backend"? Of course there's a backend!

~~~
onli
Backend not in the programmatical sense. Blog engines like Wordpress, also
Ghost, have a backend/admin area that is invisible to normal readers, where
the blog owner or whoever is logged in with enough rights can write an entry
or change the settings, stuff like that. This has nothing of that. The moment
you are logged in, the entry editor get shown directly on the blog, settings
that can be manipulated (which are very few so far, by design) are controlled
next to their UI representation with now shown controls.

