Thread

ExpressionEngine 1.6.8
Build:  20090915

Hi,

One of my clients emailed me to say that, even though they have comment moderation turned on, certain comments are going live on their site without being moderated. The comments are not being made by members of the site and some have been spam (you don’t have to be a member to leave comments). Captcha is on.

The site is using Low NoSpam, but I don’t think that overrides comment moderation settings.

I’m not really sure how to troubleshoot this, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Can you please try upgrading to EE 1.7? Just to make sure we’re on the same page in terms of code and to rule out file corruption issues.

Sure. I have to wait for approval before I can upgrade the site. I’ll let you know.

No worries, we’ll be here.

Ok, I updated the site to 1.7. Is there anyway to track where the issue might be coming from? It seems random and it’s letting legitimate and spam comments through, so I’m not really sure how to troubleshoot the problem.

So you’re on the latest version now? Is there any pattern to these spam comments? Do they require moderation for members’ comments?

Yes, I updated to the latest version of EE.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to detect a pattern because they’ve deleted the comments before I could look more closely at them. All I know is some have been spam while others have been legitimate.

They don’t require moderation for member comments, but the comments that have gotten through have not been by registered members.

Hi, Eric. Can you test yourself by trying to submit a comment while not logged in? That’s really the only way you’re going to know for sure. I’d create a dummy weblog and template group.

Does that help?

I created a comment while logged out and it needed to be moderated.

Eric ,

What version of Low NoSpam are you using? Is it the latest v1.0.5

I can see in their changelog that there was a check for memebr registration in that version

Are you using only one weblog for comments?

There have been no reported messages getting through since upgrading to 1.7.0, but it’s still early. I’ve also just upgraded Low NoSpam to the latest version. Hopefully the issue has been put to rest. Thanks for the help.

Spoke too soon: Another comment went live on the blog without moderation. One thing I noticed is that the comments could be coming from people who have previously left comments on the blog.

Are you using only one weblog for comments?

No, there are two, but the other one doesn’t get as much traffic or as many comments. Not sure if any moderated comments have gone through on that one.

Some more information from a colleague; she says:

I tested being logged out and a repeat commenter. 1st time with not checking “remember my info” and then again once that was checked, and a 3rd time commenting on another post.

All 3 experiments sent my messages to moderation.

So what’s different about the comment that wasn’t moderated? Can you see any sort of trend?