Since then I've had a look at what might be done quickly to patch up what is a very old bit of Internet code. I've found some software, paid my $50, and integrated it into the existing chat code. You will need Javascript turned on to make it work (which most people have) and it demands nothing else of users.

The solution might hold off the spammers for a day, a week, a few months or much longer. There is no certainly in any of this.

I've put a warning at the top of Chat about spam and I'd encourage people to email me if they see some. I'll be looking in as much as I can these first few days.

Although we hopefully have a solution I'd encourage anybody with the technical facility to investigate other solutions and am happy to give access to our server and the existing code. On this occasion I've put the time and money in to a solution but that's unlikely to be the case in future - I have to balance time spent on chat against doing things elsewhere that impact very many more visitors (for info the Chat pages gets viewed a few hundred times in a week - whereas Ballet.co overall deliver about 400,000 pages a week). If somebody is able to use the time we hopefully have now to plot better protection etc that would be great. Worst case is that spam comes back and we can't readily patch or replace - if that happens then the 'Not Dance' forum solution is there to be used. If it happens it will be sad, but the Internet is about change etc and if some Chat lover can summon the energy to take it forward that would be great.


Edit: Changed second senatnce of 5th para - original was "As I have this time I'm happy to put some time into Chat, but I have to balance that against doing things elsewhere that impact many more visitors..."