We've made some progress in uploading data and images to the catacombs, but much of last weekend was spent battling spambots — those evil automated Web robots that try to post spam in forums and comment areas, and that suck up e-mail addresses for nefarious purposes. I've been installing various security plugins, such as CAPTCHA, but spambots are still managing to register as fake users.

I have tried to be careful when deleting the hundreds of phony spambot user registrations, but I may have accidentally deleted a legitimate user or two. If your account was deleted, please accept my apology and please register again.

CAPTCHA, which requires you to prove you are a human being by typing in characters, seems to have stopped the spam posts in the forums. But it also makes it harder for legitimate users to create forum topics, and I'm sorry for that. I'm still looking for the best and least onerous security solution.

Regarding the genealogy data, we discovered that the birthdates are missing from many of the 6,000-plus individuals in the catacombs (database). If I have time next weekend, I'll upload an updated GEDCOM file in hopes of correcting that.

Meanwhile, thanks for your patience.

Tom