On top of the (spam) world

I think I'm getting on top of the comment and trackback spam that this site was generating. If you're running a Movable Type blog and are also getting inundated with spam, then these steps may very well help you as well. There's nothing new here, by the way, I just read some guides on how to combat comment spam and put some of the suggestions into place. And I'm here to tell you from first-hand experience that (so far, touch wood, not that I'm in the slightest bit superstitious) they seem to be working.

First off I installed the (almost ubiquitous) MT-Blacklist plugin from Jay Allen. I'd had this installed for a long time, when I was still running a MT2.xx installation. By the way, upgrading to MT3.1 is a breeze and definately worthwhile. There are lots of new features worth having.

Once I'd upgraded to 3.1, and also re-installed MT-Blacklist, I turned on comment moderation. This is a new feature in MT3, and allows me to approve a comment before it appears on the site. I was still getting emails asking me to despam comments, but at least the comments were "pending" and not "live".

I installed the mt-moderate plugin which allows moderation of trackback pings. I started getting emails asking me to approve spam trackbacks now. After a few weeks of putting up with this and eventually getting fed up with it, I read some guides and started getting a bit more aggressive.

I renamed the scripts that handle comments and trackbacks, which, to be honest, is the first thing I should have done. Any automated program looking for /cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi immediately hits a 404. This cut down greatly on the number of emails I was getting.

I then went a bit over the top and disabled trackbacks for the entire blog. This may have been a knee-jerk reaction.

Getting into the spirit of installing plugins and customising my MT installation, I had another look at the Movable Type plugins directory and found conversation killer, a plugin that runs once a day and closes comments on posts that are more than 10 days old (I can change this value in the plugin configuration). It can also close trackbacks on posts more than x days old as well.

Since I put these measures into place I haven't received a single email asking me to moderate a spam comment. All of the spam comments and trackbacks were to old posts anyway, so the two biggest upgrades I did was to install conversation killer and to rename the comment/trackback scripts. I've just had a look at the MT-Blacklist activity log, and it hasn't been troubled by a single duff comment all week. Which is how it should be.

So.... I've decided to risk taking off the comment moderation. I still get an email when someone posts a comment, but the comment appears on the site immediately. Comments are closed on posts more than 10 days old, and I think I'll turn trackbacks back on. And then wonder why no-one's tracking back to me.