drusoicy, I’ll look into things when I add the trackback check to the combo (new in EE 1.5.1!). Probably tomorrow.

So, I’m busy updating the Akismet combo, and immediately I run into a problem: there is no native trackback moderation algorithm in EE. No way to open or close a trackback. Which is a shame, because now I can’t process trackbacks the same way I do with comments. I can see two options:

1. Check trackback, if Akismet thinks it’s spam, bail out and do nothing. No record of the blocked trackback, but also no hassle. This is done in a jiffy.

2. Create an identical table `exp_trackback_moderated` (or something), and if the checked trackback is considered spam, save it in there, and use the module to manage the caught trackbacks. This would take more time (which I’m short on already… :( ) and somehow a whole table to mimic that which can be done with one simple attribute seems like overkill to me…

Let’s hear your thoughts about this, people.

Speed and option 1 work for me.

I’ve had no false positives on plenty of comment spam since I started using Akismet. I’m comfortable enough that I’m willing to risk a false positive on a trackback in order to get help with the volume of trackback spam we receive.

The long-term answer should be another feature request to integrate the attribute you need w/trackbacks ... and lots of begging for a quick release of the new build.

Thanks for your work whatever you decide.

Be well,
Michael Cage

I realize it would be a lot of trouble, but option 2 would be great if you can get around to developing it. I’d say go with option 1 to start and then see if you can manage to add in option 2. Of course it might be easier to ask the devs if they could put trackback moderation into EE as well.

Option #1 is OK by me.

Well, I finally got round to upgrading the combo. I went for option #1 for now. Download version 1.0 from my site

A question.

Added trackback checks

Can this feature be used instead of Bad Behavior 2 plugin?

Can I delete the BB2 plugin?

Thanks.

sigork - 14 November 2006 08:04 AM

Can this feature be used instead of Bad Behavior 2 plugin?

Can I delete the BB2 plugin?

Although the result might be the same, Bad Behavior and Akismet work in different ways. This combo was not meant to be a replacement for BB2, so I’d recommend to use both. One can never have enough weapons to battle all the spam, methinks.

OK, first thing to say: awesome job.  This was the one thing I missed since switching from Wordpress.  It works like a charm and is way neater than captchas.  Thanks for developing this, great work!

I have hit an issue - I have only noticed it since installing the Akismet module this morning:  Any post with just one word in gets met with

“The Form You Submitted Contains the Following Errors: Unable to receive your comment at this time”

I have tested that a spam style comment gets picked up - it does, and any comment with more than one word that isn’t spam gets through, but one word = no go.

Any ideas?  Is this down to a setting I can tweak in the Akismet module, or is it just co-incidence that I noticed this issue today?  Any help much appreciated

Again, though, great work on this.

Thanks, Andy. I appreciate it.

Then, as for your issue. Have you seen Lisa’s remark in this thread about that very same error message? It has to do with duplicate comment entries. Check out this KB-entry.

Oops.  I did see Lisa’s reply, but totally missed what it was actually saying.  Thanks for alerting me to it, and for the link to the KB.  Sorry to have asked a duplicate question.

This extension may be just what I need. I am having a terrible time with SPAM coming through weblog comments. Over the past week the amount of SPAM I am receiving is making me consider taking down what is a relatively low volume BLOG. In any event, my question is does this plug in work with version 1.3.1? I haven’t spent the time or money to upgrade to 1.4 and would like to use this plug in to try and get a handle on this problem now. I cannot find a way to require CAPTCHAS on comments on this release either. If there is a setting you know of that I might be missing which would at least enable this feature to slow down the comment SPAM, I would welcome this assistance as well. TIA for your time.

Version 1.3.1? Well, the current version of the Akismet combo certainly won’t work: that’s only compatible with EE 1.5.1 build 20061016 (and onwards). So that would mean you could only use the 0.1.0 version of the Akismet combo (download available in this thread). I haven’t tested it in 1.3.1, though. Don’t even know for sure if extensions were available back then!

Anyways, I would strongly recommend that you upgrade to 1.5.1. Major bug fixes, extra modules, trust me, it’s well worth the effort.

Extensions were added in 1.4 as you can see from the changelog - hence, despise Lowe’s best intentions, this won’t work with 1.3.1. =)

Captchas can be enabled for comments in CP Home ›  Admin ›  Weblog Administration ›  Weblog Management ›  Edit Section › Comment Posting Preferences.  There are other anti-spam measures including the built-in blacklist (updated from pMachine if you are a licensed user) and the Bad Behavior extension, plus throttling and a variety of other built-in security measures.

Quick query - I have used this with huge success, and I think it’s fantastic.  Today, though, something weird happened.  It returned a message saying my ‘API Key appears to be invalid’ whenever anyone tried to leave a comment.  A bit of googling suggests that this is likely to be due to an outage at Akismet’s end, and the fact that a WP blog I run has started slinging spam comments into moderation rather than Akismet also seems to add weight to that theory.  Does that sound right to anyone else?  Or do I have bigger problems?

Assuming it is down to Akismet, is there a way of changing that message so that it says something more useful to a commenter - like ’ we can’t accept comments right now, please try a little later’?  I changed the error message for duplicate comments by editing the lang. file - would it e something similar to do it for the API Kety message?

Thanks in advance

i got the same message with the ...api key..

Andy White - 08 December 2006 05:48 AM

Does that sound right to anyone else?  Or do I have bigger problems?

You’re right, the Akismet server appears to be down. I received messages from the Akismet mailing list from all over the world. I guess measures are being taken…

Andy White - 08 December 2006 05:48 AM

Assuming it is down to Akismet, is there a way of changing that message so that it says something more useful to a commenter - like ’ we can’t accept comments right now, please try a little later’?  I changed the error message for duplicate comments by editing the lang. file - would it e something similar to do it for the API Kety message?

You can edit the file lang.akismet_check.php to suit your needs.

I’ll probably add another option in this combo when I can find the time: moderate comments when Akismet is unreachable (y/n)... That’ll be a nice backup plan…

Ahh, I guess if you are getting it on your site, too, Misu, tehn the problem must lie with Akismet - that’s good news