Comment spam keeps getting worse and worse. I use MT-Blacklist to clean some of it up, but that just slows it down. Right now the oil is still gushing into my ocean and onto the beach, and I have to stop the flow before I can worry about cleaning up. As an attempt at that, you now have to preview any comment before posting. If that doesn’t work, I may use a code system like SarahK (I’d rather that than registration). Since you’ll have to preview, use more html tags. I’ll later add instruction on how to do a hyperlink to the comments section for those not as familiar with HTML.
Now, if that stops it, I have no idea how I can clean it up. MT-Blacklist can’t search back far enough to find it all, and it would take forever to go through each individual post. I’m thinking there must be some solution where I export all my posts and comments as one big text file and do a function on that. Might have to write my own program if no one has one to do that. Better think about putting a Linux install on my old computer…
As for the IMAO Christmas CD, I assume some of you have gotten it by now. Make sure to tell me what you think, especially about the Happy Dance (without giving out details). That was my very first video editing.
Anyhoo, it should be known that the tracks start at track 2, and track 1 is the data (namely the Happy Dance). Also, the Happy Dance is an mpeg 4, so update your decoders (just get the latest version of Windows Media Player – it’s less evil that their other products).
Blog posting is going to start winding down. I leave for a Christmas vacation with my family in Idaho Wednesday night and won’t be back until Janurary 2nd. My parents now have a cabel modem, and I may post some (I’ll try to have a special Christmas post), but it’s time to focus on family. I’ll open my blog to my guest bloggers, though, if they feel like posting anything.
Be honorable, ronin.
Do what I did, change the name of the mt-comments.cgi to something else, like kumquat.cgi and then find in the mt.cfg file the spot where you can tell it the name of the comment script and change it there, check through your template too, though I think you only need to change it in the mt.cfg, it’s been a while so I don’t remember exactly. but I haven’t gotten any comment spam at all since I did that.
Email me if you need help.
Matt,
Coo’. I don’t know how the automated spammers work.
The preview feature may stop it. But most spambots aren’t smart enough to deal with input fields. So they’ll actually skip that page altogether and go directly to the script that updates your database. That is why changing the name mt-comments.cgi will slow them down. It’s been my experience that they will eventually figure out what you changed it to and come back. What you can try is add a hidden field to your comments entry screen that grabs the IP of the poster. Then on the script that actually updates your database you could have it check for that field and if it doesn’t exist, it can just drop the comment. Same concept as the code but no change in user experience. It’s worked wonders for me but I use WordPress. As for the clean up…that is a big steaming pile of doo doo. Let me guess…Texas Holdem?
Hmm. I don’t know if this would work, but RightWingNews makes ya register if you want to comment. Maybe that would help…
Oh. Right. I’m going to guest-post.
They threatened to KILL me, Frank! And they threatened to stomp on my herb garden!
Time to load the guns, eh.
I wish I had money for a IMAO CD, care to give a free one to a poor college student Frank? lol Anyway, have a good Christmas and enjoy your time with the family. Merry Christmas.
Frank;
Interesting, but I think you have a typo.
I think it’s cool you let us know you parents have a cabal modem. Now we know the source of all the conspiracies….We should have known, it appears to be genetic.
Laurence,
Come on, not like you’re going to be celebrating Christmas. Don’t be a wuss and guest post. My readers hardly ever carry out their threats.
Frank,
One thing you can try in addition to renaming your comments.cgi file is to install a Turing test. James Seng has a pretty good one, that has worked for a number of sites, including Hog On Ice. Take a look and see what you think.
As far as cleaning up your comments goes, I’m a database administrator. If you can get me your comments in some format I can import (just about any plain text format, delimited or fixed-width fields, Excel except you probably have more than 64000 comments, MS Access, etc), I can process the data and return it to you in the same format.
Or, if you can run SQL scripts on your database, just send me the schema and I’ll design one that will kill most of your spam for you.
Just an offer. E-mail if you’re interested.
Enjoy the NW, I’m heading SE. The IMAO CD will be waiting for me there. I wanted to take my laptop w/me, but I don’t trust airports. Do they really break them open looking for C4?
Idaho! That’s where I am! Are you going up to Sun Valley with all the rich people, or will you hang out amongst the common folk? I just hope you aren’t going to Nampa; this link shows only some of the terrors hidden there… http://www.idahopress.com/articles/2003/10/15/news/story1.txt
As to the comment spam load issue, Six Apart has some helpful things about that from the creator of MT-Blacklist:
http://www.movabletype.org/news/2004/12/comment_spam_load_issue.shtml
SPAM!!!!! it doesn’t work Frank, I can spam. Go back to the drawling board.
Have a good trip Frank, & Merry Christmas to you & your family. If you see Joe Foo’, give him my thanks for his service.
Have a good trip Frank, & a Merry Christmas to you & your family. If you see Joe Foo’, give him our thanks for his service.
Stupid button!!!
merry Christmas, and have a great trip, Frank J.! and Curt, i think he said cabel…still trying to figure out what implications that might have…:)
and did you just mention Linux in a positive way, or was that just sarcasm more subtle than i’m used to from you?
I LOST 900 POUNDS IN 3 DAYS EATING EVERYTHING I WANTED AND WITHOUT EXERCISING!!! CLICK HERE!!!
(just a friendly test)
Increase the size of your penis 297 inches! Take our patended medication and it will happen over night.
I used MT-Blacklist to clean up after the prolific spammers toasted my blog a while ago. It was a TON of comments and I had no problems… but I KNOW you get way more comments than I do, so you might have a problem with the 30 million legitimate comments….
I changed the comments.cgi name thing for a VERY short time.. it messed with a plugin I had installed and basically was more of a headache than it was worth.
I closed old comments with the MTCloseComments Plugin (start there and follow the trail back, it’ll explain each step I took). In my case, I closed anything older than 10 days.. you might want to cut that down some or extend it, as your heart desires.
Combined with MTBlacklist, it’s been 100% effective and it’s not nearly as intrusive as that number-thing SarahK uses (I HATE that thing) or registration.
My biggest problem wasn’t denying the comments, though, it was stopping the bandwidth-leeching that occurs when they continually target your blog… but that’s a different rant.
good luck with it….
oh, and I haven’t even had a denial since August when I activated everything…