Thread

Hi, I’ve been getting an abundance of comment spam on years-old blog entries that I never set comment expiration dates on.  Is there a way to select a big group of entries and expire their comment capability, so that I can stop getting e-mail alerts that “someone has responded to your comment” to an entry from 3 years ago?

If you have a way of pin-pointing these entries (anything older than two years, say) a custom SQL query might be a good option.

Hmmm, how would I do that exactly?  I could definitely expire comment capabilities for everything from June 2010 and earlier. 

How come the CAPTCHA isn’t inhibiting these spammers?

Hmmm, how would I do that exactly?  I could definitely expire comment capabilities for everything from June 2010 and earlier. 

How come the CAPTCHA isn’t inhibiting these spammers?

take a look at this vid to see just how spammers operate
Expression Engine backlink software bot

The easiest way is to find out an entry_id that is the cutoff for what you want to use.. Let’s use the value 1000 for an example.

update exp_weblog_titles set allow_comments = 'n' where entry_id < 1000 and allow_comments = 'y'

NOTE: Make a backup copy of your exp_weblog_titles table just in case.

Does that help?

These days some of the spammers hire real people to defeat spammers. You might want to try some other forms of CAPTCHAs or invoke comment moderation.

Hi, my apologies; I’m more of a front-end guy than a back-end…  Where do I type that command in?

Never mind; I’ve got it.  Thanks for the help!

Glad to see that helped. Post again as needed, please.