Comments on: Comments are Down

By: patricia

patricia — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:01:58 +0000

i'm probably coming late to the party, but David Raynes worked up MT application to close comments. I was using a PHP script to close comments, but David's solution allows you to choose between blogs. I like that much better.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 08:57:19 +0000

I think people are going to be sorely disappointed when they realize registration isn’t going to stop comment spam.

By: James

James — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:01:15 +0000

I guess this is a bad time to mention the penis-enlarging devices that I’m selling.

By: David Bisset

David Bisset — Sun, 25 Jan 2004 02:30:49 +0000

I tried this unique solution – unabling users to enter a simple six-digit number to leave a comment – and I haven’t had spam since the minute i installed it. And no maintenance. And I don’t use MT-Blacklist. :-)
http://www.flex-mx.com/archives/000310.html

By: Hans

Hans — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:46:27 +0000

I also followed several of the tips in Yoz Graheme’s site. Tip #5 did the job. Adding the preview then post two-step process killed off all comment spam on my MT site. It’s an easy change and additionaly gives (forces :’) commenters a second chance to review what they are going to post.

By: oli

oli — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:59:02 +0000

Check out Yoz Graheme’s seven quick tips for a spam-free blog. You should do tip 1 (rename your mt-comments.cgi file, then update the mt.conf file) immediately – that should stop a majority of the spam. Your comments script is in one of the two expected places, so it’s a big bullseye for spam bots.
Between that and MT-Blacklist I’ve had zero spam. But then again I’m no one of consequence ;-)

By: David

David — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:18:55 +0000

"Next up is to figure out how to automatically turn off comments on older posts..." The CloseComments plugin may be what you're after. You just copy it to your plugins directory and put anywhere in your main index template, where n is the number of days after which you want posts to be closed to comments. [mySQL version of MT required.]

By: Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:04:51 +0000

Ah, the irony. We’re posting comments on a post entitled “Comments are Down”.
Anyhow, I’m glad you’ve got them re-enabled. I hope that sites find ways to deal with the spam because blogs just aren’t the same when they lose the interaction that comments provide.

By: Dan Cederholm

Dan Cederholm — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 02:29:04 +0000

ak – no, just delete you :-)
Brian – thanks, I did upgrade a few days ago — it definitely helps, in that URLs in comments are now turned into redirects, therefore ruining the Google page rank thing for spammers. The problem is that spammers don’t really know about this yet, so they’ll continue until everyone has this feature — and it’s well known.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 01:21:36 +0000

MT released an update:
http://www.movabletype.org/news/2004_01.shtml#000882
Will this help you?