bmewhinney
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Forum: Plugins
In reply to: Spam filling up Database!Yup, we’re about to wander off-topic starting about NOW…
First, Whooami, forget about all this blogology stuff, your village-idiot.org is very excellent. In ways both technical and political. Not just sayin’ that.Back to topic….
A newly-registered member in my blog would still have to get past the rule “Comment author must have a previously approved comment.” Harsh. It’s as if I was formerly a tech-magazine editor, heh.My blog’s dirty little secret is that I’m not really trolling for comments or even new blog members. Satisfaction comes from scanning my server logs and discovering how many hundreds of eyeballs (not robots) stopped by every day, explored the whole place, and then left without dirtying the bathroom. I’m not trying for website “stickiness,” just frontal impact on the reader (one of your header quotes said it quite well: “The harder you fall, the higher you bounce”).
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: Spam filling up Database!UPDATE….
Well, maybe not “100%” defense. After activating Bad Behavior, I got ONE trackback-spam (caught and held by Akismet plugin) in 24 hours. No big deal, I just added the spammer’s IP# to my WP-Ban exclusion list and then deleted the trackback. Still, I’m pleased.Forgot to mention this…. Here’s an earlier rave about my original anti-spam setup and testing; note that earlier, funkier versions of various plugins were then in use, and Bad Behavior had not yet been deployed in my server.
Yo, HandySolo, I totally agree that “forcing registration cuts back on what might have been useful comments,” but registration also keeps the flamers and goofs locked out. There are plenty of public blogs out there where mad dogs can mark their territory.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: Spam filling up Database!You can never have enough DATA….
I have gradually built up a solid (100%) defense against trackback spam in my WordPress 2.3.3 blog which I host at home (Mac OS X Server). The ingredients are as follows:
— Registration is required, with user’s email address confirmed.
— Trackbacks are OFF in WordPress settings (as if that makes any difference).
— Akismet 2.1.4 plugin installed and activated.
— Worst Offenders 0.2a plugin activated.
— WP-Ban 1.20 plugin activated.
— Bad Behavior 2.0.13 plugin activated.Akismet definitely “works” to the extent that it thoroughly filters trackbacks and allows you approve/disapprove stuff. But it’s annoying and tedious, especially because I have trackbacks already turned off in WP! You can always simply let Akismet age and then trash trackbacks automatically.
Worst Offenders and WP-Ban work well together, if you enjoy tinkering. Worst Offenders clusters the main sources of trackback spam by sender’s IP#, and if you collect all those IPs and add them to WP-Ban’s banned-senders list, you can eventually lock out in advance 99% of the trackbacks that Akismet would normally collect. You only need to update WP-Ban’s banned list occasionally thereafter. Plus WP-Ban lets you display any rude error-message HTML page to spammers. 🙂
If you want to KILL trackback spam entirely, I suggest the Bad Behavior plugin. It hasn’t malfunctioned (“mal-WHAT?”) for me at all, even while it’s running concurrently with the other plugins listed above, and I suspect that I could run only Bad Behavior and get 100% protection (I may try that later). Admittedly this very powerful plugin needs careful observation, might block the wrong trackbacks or users, or might conflict with other plugins. Drive carefully. Byee!