There's been alot of talk about comment spam for the last few months. I haven't paid *too* much attention (and have even gotten bored with Kalsey's many, many comment spam rants) because it hasn't really effected me. I think I have gotten a total of like 5 comment spams ever. The question is when should you care? And when is this comment spam thing going to get *huge*? I would say now. Better safe than sorry.
So here is my first (and hopefully last) post on comment spam. Aimed towards Movable Type Users and Beginners, and inspired by seeing poor bystanders like Dan get bombarded with CS, and even get discouraged about comments altogether. Feedback and discussion is what makes blogs great, lets keep it that way.
The following directions will assist you in making your blog spam proof. The MT-Blacklist plugin is a filter that all comments must pass through before actual posting. The Close comments script turns off comments on entries older then X number of days. I know this all works with MT 2.6 and above.
- Get Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist plugin.
- Upload to your server, and read Installation Instructions
- After installed go to to Add button on the menu
- Paste Dan's blacklist.txt into the box, click add
- It'll even De-spam your current blog, so do that too!
- Now its time to turn off commenting on old entries, Get Close Comments
- Update the script with your database info, and set the output mode to 0 (line 36)
- Upload into your MT directory (/mt)
- If you have /cpanel we are now going to set up a cron job for it
- Login to your cpanel, and then find the Cron Jobs link
- Go to Standard, then enter: $HOME/mt/closecomments.php
- Set the time, mine is set everyday at midnight.
- Click save and now you're done. You have a auto spam protected blog. Yay
07:52 PM on 01.13.04
I gotta get me MT (although I have had no CS thus far).