WordPress.org

1. dennism86
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Hi guys and girls, how are you?

   First of all: I absolutely LOVE Wordpress for the opportunities it offers you to create and maintain a blog. I hired someone to set everything up for me and the blog has worked it's magic ever since, and it's becoming more and more popular these days.

   There's only one problem: the comment "system" is totally dead, which PREVENTS rather than stimulates community activity, or community creation for that matter.

   And I'll tell you why:

   I currently have 424 comments, none of them are relevant, and ALL of them are SPAM! Is there any way I can "clean up" the comments section of the blog in a way that not only removes the spam, but prevents any future spamming as much as possible?

   I was thinking about implementing the Relish plugin so people are rewarded with a report or something like that whenever they comment on an article, and I was wondering if that will slow the spamming down?

   I basically want to start promoting making comments business wide, but the bottleneck is spam here. Can anyone please help me on my way?

   Any help is MUCH appreciated!

   With kindest regards,

   Dennis

2. dennism86
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Oh yeah btw: just found the Akismet plugin that can prevent spam, but there's only one problem: I need an API key, but when I try to login? WP tells me my e-mail address and/or username do not exist.

   Jeez, that's funny... because that would mean my site that exists, doesn't really exist. Can someone please help!?

3. Kawauso
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Your wordpress.org account is separate from wordpress.com, so you'd need to set up a new account there to get an API key for Akismet. That said, I find using the Invisible Defender is reasonably effective at stopping comment spam through other methods and SABRE is good for blocking fake registrations in stealth mode. That might just be the characteristics of the spambots I face though :)

4. dennism86
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Thanks Kawauso! I got Akismet to work now and have finally removed all the spam and approved some genuine comments.

   But there appears to be a problem :S because whenever someone tries to post a comment on my blog? They get the error below the line. Weird thing about it is that I can see and moderate their comment from the admin panel, but that's about it. What's wrong here?

   Is it because I am using an older version of WP or is it because I just installed Comment Relish (a plugin) and although it works correctly, am I not seeing something here? How can I fix this?

   Here's the error...

   ======================================

   Internal Server Error
   The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
   Please contact the server administrator, support@supportwebsite.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

   More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Apache/1.3.33 Server at win-with-womenblog.com Port 80

5. dennism86
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   does anyone know what this error means?

6. Kawauso
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Version 2.6.3! Definitely upgrade and check you've not been hacked first off http://wordpress.org/support/topic/307660

   Second, that error message usually means that there's something wrong in your .htaccess file, so is it possible that one of the plugins modified that? It'd be quite unusual behaviour not to tell you if it was going to though...

7. dennism86
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Okay thanks for the info... seems to me like I need to make a back up of the site AND the files and forgive me for saying this: but even the comprehensive guide on making backups doesn't make any sense to me AT ALL.

   It's WAY too complicated and I don't understand mySQL. The whole guide sounds like Harry Potter stuff.. lol.

   So what am I supposed to do now if I can't understand any of this stuff? And might I say, these WP forums provide everything... except an overniew for people with no freaky deaky IT bill gates background.

8. esmi
   Member
   Posted 2 months ago #

   One option would be to find paid support.

9. Otto42
   Moderator
   Posted 2 months ago #

   Honestly, I have to agree. Running your own website is not just "writing a blog". It's "running a website". It's a job. People get paid for that sort of thing. And like any job, it requires some know-how. Since this is the internet, that know-how is probably technically oriented.

   In other words, it would be extremely hard to make those guides much simpler than they already are. If you find them "complicated", then you really don't have the necessary background to understand what they're talking about. This stuff requires some knowledge, yes, but that knowledge is really pretty minimal, anybody should realistically be able to figure it out in under a day and with minimal Googling.

   So, if you're unable or unwilling to learn how to do technical things, then you've realistically got one of two options:

   1. Get somebody else to do it for you. This usually involves payment.

   2. Use a service that doesn't require you to "run your own website", like creating a blog on WordPress.com or Blogger or something instead.

   The latter is usually cheaper, but you give up some abilities like being able to customize heavily, or run advertising, etc.

10. dennism86
    Member
    Posted 2 months ago #

    Hm... okay so I just let my webmaster (paid support) make a MySQL database backup of the blog so I can safely upgrade it and restore stuff if something goes wrong.

    But guess what? Apparently something has gone wrong, because when I type in the URL of my blog it says "server down, contact your host or make sure your databse is up and running" and so forth.

    Ehm... what is this?

11. dennism86
    Member
    Posted 2 months ago #

    Okay my entire blog isn working now :-)

    It all started when I downloaded the plugin Comment Relish and installed it and now I fear I can't get my blog back up again.
    
    Can someone please help me? What do I do? DO I need to delete the .htaccess file now or what?

    I'd like to get some help now please. I've invested more than 60 hours in this stupid blog and I don't feel like putting in another 60...

    Is someone out there?

12. dennism86
    Member
    Posted 2 months ago #

    BTW: I can't even login on the admin panel so please don't give me login advice... it appears like comment relish screwed up my site.

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