robertswift

i’ve been suffering from a string of SPAM messages recently and hacked the check_comment function in wp-includes/functions.php to put a comment in the moderator queue if the e-mail domain doesn’t have an MX record. my personal experience of these spam messages is that they assume the worst and include all fields whereas most genuine commentors don’t seem to leave their e-mail. the reason i mention this is because the hack i’ve put in place undertakes a DNS query which slows down page loading by a good few seconds. people posting a comment won’t notice this as the query is bypassed if no e-mail address is provided.
i’m sure that others will have a view on this hack which i insert as the last checks in the function:

// hack to query the MX record for a given e-mail domain
// uses getmxrr (http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function.getmxrr.php) which
// the documentation states shouldn't be used for address validation.
// on the basis that an MX record will typically appear for a valid domain
// it is reasonable to assume that an e-mail address that doesn't hail from
// a domain *with* an MX record *might* be a spammer
//
// RDS - 20/12/2004
$address = Array();
$mxrecords = Array();
$address = split('@', $email);
if (strlen($address[1]) > 0) {
// a domain name was found, check it
if (!getmxrr($address[1], $mxrecords)) {
return false;
}
}


it’s not a case of going of of my way to base IE, more going out of my way to create something that validates as standards compliant content and at the same time makes the failings of IE apparent…
it’s because IE is in the majority that i feel this way. and the need to implement even a single “hack” to make something work just demonstrates the need for more people to do something about it.
and i don’t hate IE, it’s perfect for one thing… windows update!

your gallery link is broken 🙁