Support » Requests and Feedback » Spam getting through athough commenting disabled

  • Hi,

    I have comments disabled on our blog, however, spam by automated bots is still getting through and waiting to be moderated. It would be great if an extra check is put on the comment submission form to decline any comments from being passed directly to the script when comments on the blog are completely disabled.

    Thanks

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    They’re probably not comments. They’re probably trackbacks. And disabling comments and/or trackbacks is not a legitimate way to stop spam.

    Install spam blocking plugins instead.

    Bad Behavior.
    Akismet.
    Spam Karma 2.

    These stop spam. No other methods will.

    Thread Starter sendspace

    (@sendspace)

    Maybe they are trackbacks. But whatever they are, the correct behavior is to simply not allow them in once they are disabled.

    Many will think that if they disable comments, they will not get any spam — and not all will disable comments because of spam.

    To me having disabled comments means that comments really can’t get through, is perfectly logical and this is how it should be.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    No. When you disable comments, they are *disabled*. Really. It doesn’t just remove the form, it stops accepting comments for that post. Form or not, it will not take comments, period.

    That said:
    – Disabling comments globally doesn’t change the settings on your old posts. Comments are enabled/disabled on a per post basis, and turning off “Allow people to post comments on the article” only turns it off for new posts, not for old posts.
    – Trackbacks and pingbacks are not comments and they too can be enabled/disabled on a per post basis. So even if you turn off comments for a post, trackbacks and pingbacks can still get through unless you turn those off as well.

    Go to the Edit Post page for any given post. There’s a setting on the right to Allow Comments and Allow Pings. You have to turn both of those off to disallow comments/pingbacks for that post. Changing the global settings in Options->Discussion doesn’t change all those settings on your posts. Those only apply to new posts and it says so on the page itself.

    Thread Starter sendspace

    (@sendspace)

    I did have pings enabled. Thanks for that tip.

    What comes through is:

    Subject: Please moderate: …
    “A new comment on the post #….”

    That would be an actual comment rather than a ping, no?

    Will disable all pings on all posts individually as you mentioned and we’ll see how it goes.

    Thanks

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    What comes through is:
    Subject: Please moderate: …
    “A new comment on the post #….”
    That would be an actual comment rather than a ping, no?

    No. Internally, all comments/pings are stored in the wp_comments table and so they are all using the same internal comments database functions and such. So it’ll have that same message for anything, whether it’s a comment/trackback/pingback. There was little point in differentiating between them at that level of operation.

    The difference between them is:
    -A flag specifying which is which
    -The way that they come into the system (three different input methods)
    -The fact that comments/pings can be disabled separately.

    You may probably want to see how those comments get through by looking at a log file closely. This is an example shot. If a spammer goes directly to wp-comments-post.php, then changing the file name and making modifications elsewhere accordingly may stop spammers from posting comments. But I’m not a PHP programmer. It’s just an opinion from nobody.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    WordPress.org Admin

    Changing the name and attempting to hide it that way is a poor way to deal with the issue.

    The Bad Behavior plugin, on the other hand, will block that sort of activity immediately. No hacking of the core code needed, just install and activate.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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