blogspot is the single biggest source of spam out there. Therefore ".blogspot." has been added to the antispam blacklist. At the time we made that decision we replaced roughly THREE HUNDRED different keywords with ONE. As time went on it has blocked THOUSANDS of pieces of spam from b2evolution users blogs.

Certainly NOT arbitrary eh?

Go to your antispam tab, filter for "blogspot", and tick the green arrow that will allow that keyword to be used. If you then start getting blogspot spam you can block each one individually again with the "ban" symbol that will appear with it on your stats tab or in comments.

Fair enough....NOT arbitrary.....but I'll risk the tsunami of spam for the meanwhile as I have a need to link to a pesky blogspot blog. Thanks for the prompt reply.

Best Regards CS

No problem! Hey check it out: I personally drove the decision to list blogspot AND had to overcome it because I wanted to link to a blogspot user. I think it is once again time to ask for "let the admin decide if bloggers can (a) see the keyword that is blocking their post and (b) bypass that block on a case-by-case basis.

Is it irony or deserved that I fell into a trap I created?

Irony indeed! But what i was thinking...could the error message be changed so as to save people a trawl thru the forums. Had I known when I got that message that all I had to do was amend my antispam list then I wouldnt have had a problem. The error message is too cryptic IMHO. Instead of 'URL is not allowed' hows about 'Blocked by Antispam' or something similar.

Best Regards CS

I very much agree with americymru. The message is cryptic. This is very similar to a [url=http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=11300&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=]feature request[/url] I did some time ago, where I asked the URL or part of the URL that is blocked to be revealed.
Ideally the message is: "The URL containing ".blogspot" is not allowed because it is in the spamlist" or something similar.

Happy New Year

Just thought that i should post to wish everyone a happy new year and to say that despite my earlier intemperate outburst I am of the opinion that b2evolution is the best blogging engine out there and I look forward to using it with continued and growing confidence in the new year.(just wish I could say the same about the TinyMCE extension...but thats another story)

Happy New Year CS.