Comments on: WordPress Comment Spam

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 19:53:44 +0000

If only I had time to wite my own comments system. Nah, what’s the point re-inventing the wheel where there are perfectly good systems out there already?

The only reasons I can see for someone to write their own blogging software are:

1) if they want to simply as a challenge (and they have the time) - still not a good argument,

2) they want to learn a language like PHP and need a project to learn it with.

3) They really have specialist needs (and you don’t Ox!)

By: Ox

Ox — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 17:59:25 +0000

teeheehee…. the beauties of having your own comments system *grin* *winks and runningtings*

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 24 Nov 2004 22:24:25 +0000

My spider trap isn’t really about simple IP-banning. Well, it is sort-of, but not as a permanent, long-term solution. The mechanics of it are founded on two elements of the architecture: a) any spammer is forced to brute-force crawl the site, and are funnelled into the trap right quick, and b) the IP ban effectively kills that session - immediately and without any interaction on my part. It’s an amazingly effective trap-door solution.

I clean out the .htaccess file on a regular basis, and even quicker if I see in the alerter email that the source address was that of a large ISP’s proxy. That being said, 99% of my hits aren’t from ISP proxies. The bottom line is that the mechanism is very effective and totally unobtrusive to the end user - it doesn’t require entering cryptic strings, validating comments, or maintaining user accounts or whitelists. I’m running it on four sites, and they’re all blissfully comment-spam free.

Thanks for the link.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 14:27:22 +0000

That’s fine if you’ve got the time!

By: runningtings

runningtings — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 13:46:13 +0000

build your own CMS, works for me…

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:50:30 +0000

They’re still at it! I’ve added Gudfly’s WP AuthImage hack/plugin. Lets see if that helps…