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1. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Hello,

   I am having trouble with my blog at easylawofattraction.com.

   A few months ago I started getting lots of comment spam. You can see the content of the spam if you check the blog. Lots of mention of the word "mammaria" and "gold"...

   Now what I also noticed around this time was that I could not log in to alter comments on my site anymore. Whenever I would go to edit-comments.php, it would give me a 404 error, even though the web page is clearly there.

   Also, people are not able to comment on my blog anymore. When they try to the page says: "could not open socket"

   Regarding the comment spam, I got the wordpress plugin that makes the commenter fill out a captcha. So I get no more spam. :) But the other problems I mentioned above are still there.

   Does anyone know what this is? Is it some kind of virus maybe?

   Any help would be really really appreciated.

   All the Best,
   Alex

2. jdembowski
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Alex,

   Well, your site looks okay. I just tried to leave a comment and got the same message "could not open socket". I doubt that it's a virus but something in your setup is trying to connect to something and failing.

   Check you error_log file if you can. Also, try the usual: disable all of your plugins and see if that helps. Once you have them all disabled, try leaving a test comment.

   If that works, start re-enabling them until you find the culprit.

   Good luck.

3. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Thanks for the help.

   Where is the error_log file?

4. jdembowski
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   If you are running your own server and are on apache then try looking in /var/log/apache2/error_log.

   If you are using a hosting service (for some reason I think you are using Awardspace) then contact the your provider and ask for a copy of the error_log.

5. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Ok, so I checked the plugins by turning them all off.

   The edit-comments.php file doesn't work still when even after all plugins are off, but I can post a comment at least.

   Unfortunately it is the captcha plugin that is causing trouble with being able to post comments so I need to find a way to filter out spamming robots...

   I still cannot access my edit-comments.php

6. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Hmmm... not so sure how helpful awardspace will be since I have a free account. But I'll try anyway.

7. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Ok so I sent a request in for the error_log file. We'll see how quickly they respond.

   Any other thoughts on what might be the problem?

   Someone mentioned that there might be a problem with the .htaccess file, but I don't really know.

8. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Can I edit the php code myself? I seem to see from google that I can get the error_log via php call.

9. alexbaranosky
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #

   Bleep. They said they only give error_log file to paying accounts. Hmmm...

10. jdembowski
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Can I edit the php code myself? I seem to see from google that I can get the error_log via php call.

    I've never tried but you should be able to do it by adding this to your .htaccess file (backup that file before modifying it!)

    php_flag log_errors on
    php_value error_log /your/blog/home/php-error.log

    See if that generates any log data when you try to post a comment.

    Bleep. They said they only give error_log file to paying accounts. Hmmm...

    Well, that makes sense... I mean, you are getting what you paid for...

11. Saurus
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    If he's using a free account - he probably is not allowed access to the root by ftp ... so no way to edit .htaccess or his php files, I would think.

12. Chris_K
    Administrator
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Just to answer one of your earlier "generic" questions about managing comment spam, please see the Combating_Comment_Spam page in the Codex.

13. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Thanks guys,

    I can actually edit my .htaccess file, I am pretty sure since it is in with all of the other files I normally can easily access... I didn't do it yesterday because I was busy, and didn't want to try something extensive.

    Should I do it? Is it important to get that error_log info?

    To be clear, when I turn of the wp-recaptcha plugin I am using people can post comments. But even then when I go to http://www.easylawofattraction.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php (via my account) it acts like I am trying to access a page that isn't there. So for a while I was getting all this spam, and couldn't access my account to delete the comments...

    I am setting up Akismet now. Getting rid of the old plugin I was using: wp-recaptcha

    All the Best, Thank you for the help,
    Alex

14. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Hmmm... I was going to put my API key in for aksimet, and it said

    The key you entered could not be verified because a connection to akismet.com could not be established. Please check your server configuration.

    ???

    Someone suggested to me that something could be wrong with my .htaccess file and that is why I can't access edit-comments.php properly. What do you think?

15. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    More info:

    I also am having the same 404 error trying to access plugin-editor.php ...

16. jdembowski
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Sounds like you are running into some bizarre hosting problems. The webserver sending a 404 for something that exists in irrational...

    You are running 2.5.1? After you have backed everything, have you tried re-uploading the WordPress files? You can find a copy of 2.5.1 here.

    Other than that, the only advice I have is switch to another host.

17. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    pretty sure I have 2.5.1 which is the newest non-beta version right?

    I haven't tried to re-upload the Wordpress files... I'll have to look into it. And also look into trying a new host.

18. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Anyone have any thoughts on this that haven't been mentioned?

    Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

19. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    nothing???

20. jdembowski
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Alex,

    Don't know what to tell you that hasn't been said above. You don't have any log data or error messages and you have not confirmed that you have re-uploaded your WordPress files.

    If you have re-uploaded the version and confirmed that the files are pristine, correct, right, pick your favorite euphemism, and you still can't edit comments, then your server is not behaving rationally.

21. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    How should I go about re-uploading the version?

    Do I just download the files from wordpress.com, and then upload them, letting them write over the old version that is on the server?

    Or is it more complicated than that?

22. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    P.S.

    Should I get the newest version while I'm at it?

23. jdembowski
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Do I just download the files from wordpress.com, and then upload them, letting them write over the old version that is on the server?

    Alex, how did you set this up originally? If you can upload the files and overwrite the existing ones, that should work.

    If not then you might want to accelerate your search for a new host.

    Should I get the newest version while I'm at it?

    I would stick with the version you have for now (2.5.1) before trying to upgrade. Once you have your existing version working, then you should consider upgrading to the latest version.

24. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    I originally set it up myself, by uploading the files onto the server. I will try that now.

    Thanks!

25. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Hey J!

    I so far have only re-uploaded the wp-admin folder, and TADA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Thank goodness. =D

    Thank you for the help.

26. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    So I have also uploaded the akismet plugin (which didn't come with 2.5.1) and now it won't let me configure akismet with the passcode. It says in a red box:

    "There was a problem connecting to the Akismet server. Please check your server configuration."

27. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    I think I bypassed that problem by typing the passcode in by hand in the akismet.php file.

28. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    hmmm...

    Something I did in the past 20 minutes messed the edit-comments.php file up again...

    I will try reuploading wp-admin again and make sure not to fiddle with wp-recaptcha

29. jdembowski
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    Thank you for the help.

    You're welcome and I'm glad it worked.

    I have a feeling that your free Awardspace doesn't know how to resolve names on the Internet. That would not prevent people from reaching your blog. But it would prevent Akismet and reCaptcha from being able to resolve host names and connecting to services on the Internet.

30. alexbaranosky
    Member
    Posted 11 months ago #

    So, it stopped working correctly! It worked once, and since then hasn't (edit-comments.php) Which is weird, because it hasn't worked in months it seems... So something I did fixed it and then it broke immediately again...

    I have other things I want to do now, so maybe later.

    Thanks for the help...

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