Bugspray

I too started having this issue with 2 of my WP installs following the 4.3.1 update. I maintain 20-30 sites and typically I’m wary of these updates even though they shouldn’t pose a problem. Unfortunately with all the plugins I use, conflict is inevitable.

In this case, I only updated 5 installs and waited. After just 1 day, I had the event start. But it only came from one site. No doubt having 5 sites to compare settings affords me the luxury of seeing patterns, differences, etc. So I began… And after careful inspection and monitoring for 1 week, I found a setting that was triggering the event. Actually, I found at least two.

The first has to do with comments and moderation. I was using several phrases in the “comment blacklist” box under Settings:Discussion. I had added several to this box to deal with spam. Knowing this filter could have adverse impact, I removed them and bam, the problem stopped.

On my second site, I discovered a similar pattern. But in this case, it involved two plugins that are supposed to stop spambots from visiting or posting. For the most part I’ve found these plugins helpful on some of my domains. But if you install 2 or more and don’t watch carefully, they may conflict. On this site I didn’t have phrases or websites blocked in the “comment blacklist” but I knew I had spam blocking plugins. In fact, I had 3. So for a few days I turned them off and sure enough, the comments started posting fine.

Long story short, if this problem begins its probably related to a filter or plugin thats set to do something regarding comments and spam. In my case, the comments were being flagged as spam but detected by WP before they were removed. And once removed, they become “Invalid” and if trashed/deleted, hard to pull up under the WP dashboard. This is why you don’t see anything when you try to moderate, edit, trash, etc.

So do you have any such plugins or blacklist phrases/words? If yes, I suggest you remove the filters and see if anything changes. Next, turn off any spam blocker plugins or any other plugin relating to comments.

Cheers,
J.