Crap comments

by 30 replies
37
I have heard over and over that comments are good for your blogs because they bring fresh comment.

I often have to go to my blogs and clean out SPAM comments, I almost never see any comments for things other than buy my Viagra, Cialis or what ever. I just went to one blog and cleaned out 19 pages of SPAM and while I was doing it, another SPAN comment arrived for hxxp://story-games.com/eprovost/#16 "valium vs klonopin anxiety – valium 471"

I try to make it as hard to comment on my blogs as I can, but I still get them. I hate comments and wish WordPress had a way to stop them.
#search engine optimization #comments #crap
  • Do you have Akismet or similar enabled? I find that Akismet cuts out about 99% of spam
  • Just remove the comments section. There are very, very few websites that comments bring anything positive to.
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      That's what I do, I delete the comment form/section from my CMS theme files.

      No comment form, no spam...
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • I do agree with Yukon...
  • I don't know how to do that, but I have a programmer who I work with that I am sure will do it for me or show me how to do it. I will have to check with him if I can get Skype working on my new computer.
    • [1] reply
    • Deleting the css is easy enough Timmy.

      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Why not just go into Settings->Discussion and uncheck

    Allow people to post comments on new articles
    • [1] reply
    • I already made it as difficult as I could to post a comment, but I still get them.
  • use akismat to get rid of spam..
  • Like UMS said above - just turn off commenting. I like to keep it on because of my blog, but it's nearly always completely off on the sites I build for others.

    "Invisible CAPTCHA" style plugins can be quite effective. They use Javascript to validate the request, which will root out many bots.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      If your going to turn off comments why bother having a comment form clutter up the internal pages? Delete the comment form & your guaranteed to never be spammed.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • If you are using CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc..) and really want to use the comments (which is OK in many niches) then use the plugin called "CleanTalk". I think it's around $8 - $10 per year and really does the trick.

    It doesn't require captcha or anything which is very user-friendly as well. And more importantly, it really does BLOCK the spam.

    Some of my sites use to get 800 - 1200 spam comments per day (PR5 - PR6 blogs attract spammers). Now only 2-3 of them are actually getting through. Worth investment by any means.
  • So I followed Kevin's suggestion and deleted the whole damn comments file in WordPress, so i hope that works. I have seldom ever seen a true, non spam comment. I will do without them.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      I would still delete the code on the single.php (for Wordpress) template file in the WP theme, otherwise the theme is making server calls to a file that doesn't exist (dead code) every single time someone loads the blog post page in their browser.

      Whatever the name of the comment file in your theme was named is the location on your single.php file that needs deleted.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • @Yukon, it is telling me there is no such comments.php call to action.

    <?php


    get_header(); ?>

    <div class="center_wrapper">
    <div id="main-content">
    <div class="left_front_column">

    <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <div <?php post_class(); ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

    <!--Post title-->
    <h2 class="title"><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

    <!--Date, Time and Author-->
    <p class="meta"><span class="clock"></span><span class="date"><?php the_time(get_option('date_format')) ?></span><span class="posted"> <?php _e( 'Posted by ', 'Blackskyline' ); ?> <?php the_author() ?> <?php edit_post_link(__('Edit', 'Blackskyline' )); ?></span></p>
    <!--Post content-->
    <div class="entry">
    <?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { // check if the post has a Post Thumbnail assigned to it.
    the_post_thumbnail();}?>
    <?php the_content(); ?><div class="clearer">
    </div>
    <?php wp_link_pages( array( 'before' => '<div class="page-link">' . __( 'Pages:', 'Blackskyline' ), 'after' => '</div>' ) ); ?>

    <!--Post Footer-->
    <div class="clearer">
    </div>
    <?php if ( get_the_author_meta( 'description' ) ) : // If a user has filled out their description, show a bio on their entries ?>
    <div id="entry-author-info">
    <h2 title="<?php printf( __( 'About %s', 'Blackskyline' ), get_the_author() ); ?>"><?php printf( esc_attr__( 'About %s', 'Blackskyline' ), get_the_author() ); ?></h2>
    <div id="author-avatar">
    <?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( 'user_email' ), 60 ); ?>
    </div><!-- #author-avatar -->
    <div id="author-description">

    <?php the_author_meta( 'description' ); ?>
    <div id="author-link">
    <a href="<?php echo get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ); ?>" title="<?php printf( __( 'View all posts by %s', 'Blackskyline' ), get_the_author() ); ?>">
    <?php printf( __( 'View all posts by %s', 'Blackskyline' ), get_the_author() ); ?>
    </a>
    </div><!-- #author-link -->
    </div><!-- #author-description -->
    </div><!-- #entry-author-info -->
    <?php endif; ?>
    <!--Post Footer-->
    <div class="longmeta">
    <div class="postfooter"><?php $tag = get_the_tags(); if (! has_tag()){ echo __( 'Tags: No tags', 'Blackskyline' ); } else { the_tags(__('Tags: ', ', ', 'Blackskyline')); } ?>

    <br/><?php _e( 'Categories: ', 'Blackskyline' ); ?><?php the_category(', '); ?><br/>



    <?php if (('open' == $post-> comment_status) && ('open' == $post->ping_status)) {
    // Both Comments and Pings are open ?>
    <?php _e( 'You can <a href="#respond">leave a response</a>, or <a href="<?php trackback_url(true); ?>" rel="trackback">trackback</a> from your own site.', 'Blackskyline') ?>

    <?php } elseif (!('open' == $post-> comment_status) && ('open' == $post->ping_status)) {
    // Only Pings are Open ?>
    <?php _e( 'Responses are currently closed, but you can <a href="<?php trackback_url(true); ?> " rel="trackback">trackback</a> from your own site.', 'Blackskyline') ?>

    <?php } elseif (('open' == $post-> comment_status) && !('open' == $post->ping_status)) {
    // Comments are open, Pings are not ?>
    <?php _e( 'You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.', 'Blackskyline') ?>

    <?php } elseif (!('open' == $post-> comment_status) && !('open' == $post->ping_status)) {
    // Neither Comments, nor Pings are open ?>
    <?php _e( 'Both comments and pings are currently closed.', 'Blackskyline') ?>

    <?php } ?>

    </div>

    <!--Post comments-->
    <?php comments_template(); ?>
    </div>
    </div>
    </div>
    <?php endwhile; else: ?>
    <p><?php _( 'Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.', 'Blackskyline')?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>

    </div>


    <?php get_sidebar(); ?>
    <?php get_footer(); ?>
  • Even though I deleted everything in that file, I still had 16 spam comments in my blog I deleted a minuye ago.
  • I have more problem with spam comments in Wordpress than on my Blogger blogs. I do love to get (real) comments, but that spam! I put Akismet on my Wordpress blog and have to see if it works.

    But from the comments here I think it may.

    Good thread!
  • Use Akismet.Its made for spam comments
  • i think blog comments are becoming a thing of the past, unfortunately.
  • You can keep comment option open but don't allow any other url in comments.
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      That will get you a bunch of irrelevant gibberish text diluting any SEO efforts you've tried to accomplish with the page.

      Remove the comment form & be done with it.
  • For a few years now whenever am creating a site, the first thing I do is disable the comment section completely.

    You can do the same, having to deal with comment and moderation is another job entirely, if am not a seasoned blogger for a particular site I would say, to hell with the comments and write them all off and live happy forever after like the fairy tale stories.
  • Even after I removed the comment form, I still got nine comments in the next hour or two. I could not finnd any call to action in the single.php file though. If you can find it in the post above, please let me know.

    Right now i have 79 comments. WTF
    • [1] reply
    • Do you still have the comments on in the WordPress settings? The bots that are spamming you already have your post IDs and other data scraped from the comment forms, so they can post to your comment processing script. It's a standard HTTP POST request, no form is actually needed for that.

      Please note that I'm not an expert on comment spam. Just using logic and knowledge of web technologies to explain your situation.
  • You should have Askimet activated or other useful plugin to get rid of those spammers!
  • Why don't you use captcha. My blog used to get flooded with spam comments.
    I placed captcha and i got rid of the comments
  • Well, if you don't want to mess with the code to remove the comments, there is another way you can get rid of them without having to delete them all yourself. Install WP-Optimize.

    In a couple of clicks, you can schedule it to run once a week, and it has the option to delete all spam comments and delete all unapproved comments. Make sure your Wordpress installation is set that all comments need approved before posting.

    There you go. Once a week they will all be wiped out automatically.
    • [1] reply
    • The comment form in your blog page is just a convenient way for real visitors to input their data that the form then packages up and passes to the back end Wordpress files for storing in your database.

      A spammer does not need to use the form. They will have software which packages up their spam comments and their machine and presents them direct to the back end Wordpress files... which will happily process the data and store the comment in your database.

      Removing the form on the page and deleting the comments.php file in your theme does not stop a spammer as they are not using these files.

      As they are trying to directly communicate with Wordpress it means that you have to use Wordpress to stop them. The Wordpress CMS has parameters you can set to allow or disallow comments - several replies above have suggested this to you.

      Set "Users must be registered and logged in to comment" and also set "Automatically close comments on articles older than __ days" using a parameter of 1

      Wordpress will then only allow comments on a new article, and for one day only, it will place them in the moderation queue. If you still get a large volume of comment spam in that one day window set up Akismet on your site and it will process 90% of the spam and you will not need to administer it.

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  • 37

    I have heard over and over that comments are good for your blogs because they bring fresh comment. I often have to go to my blogs and clean out SPAM comments, I almost never see any comments for things other than buy my Viagra, Cialis or what ever. I just went to one blog and cleaned out 19 pages of SPAM and while I was doing it, another SPAN comment arrived for hxxp://story-games.com/eprovost/#16 "valium vs klonopin anxiety – valium 471"