NOT a Guru!
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
Awhile ago, I set up brand new websites and blogs for people who have never had websites before and who are currently participating in a “simple marketing program” that I am running as a beta test right now. The marketing is geared for “newbies” and mom and pop business owners who are trying to get more traffic to and sales from their websites.
My good friend Elaine, who has been blogging consistently at Antiquing with Deco Diva, told me that she was getting overwhelmed with spam comments. I logged into her blog’s administrative dashboard and was shocked to see the statistics displayed below. She had close to 7500 pending comments, another 100 comments in her spam file, and 465 approved comments that I suspected were, for the most part, spam comments.
The first thing I looked at was her plug-ins. For some reason, her Akismet plugin was INACTIVE. I don’t know if Elaine had somehow inactivated it by mistake or if a spam bot software program somehow did this. In any event, I reactivated her Askimet.
If you are experiencing the problem of thousands of spam comments coming in, you might have the same problem that Elaine did. Click the PLUGINS link that is on the left side of your Wordpress blog’s dashboard menu. If your Askimet is active, it will appear under the “Currently Active Plugins” list on your plugins page. If not, it will appear in the inactive plugins and you will need to click the “activate” link. The screenshot below is what your plugin page should look like, with Askimet as a currently active plugin.
Taking a Bulk Action. Elaine was getting completely overwhelmed because she was reviewing each comment individually. You can take bulk actions on each page that appears in Wordpress’ comment section. To do this, tick the box as shown in the screen shot and you will see that every comment on the page gets checked. Then, click either one of the “Bulk Actions” options that you will see on the top and the bottom of the page. In this case, I selected “Mark as Spam” option in order to train Askimet. After you have selected your action, click “Apply.”
When your bulk comments are moved to the spam folder, you will see a DELETE ALL SPAM button on the bottom of the page. Click that and everything will get deleted. You don’t have to go through each page of comments this way.
The problem with Wordpress is that you have to go through each page of pending comments and take a bulk action on each page. In Elaine’s case, she had well over 300 pages of pending comments to go through. Askiment has a CHECK FOR SPAM feature that you can click. This will automatically move all of the questionable comments into the spam folder without your having to go through each and every page.
Unfortunately, Elaine had so many pending comments that Wordpress and Askimet were unable to process the over-7000 pending comments. To deal with this, I went into her control panel and deleted them from the mySQL database. Here’s a glimpse at how this was done. For purposes of this post, I have not created a full blown tutorial on how to work with mySQL databases.
Dealing with Spam Comments That Were Previously Approved. Like the “pending” comments, you can take bulk actions with the approved comments, as shown in the screenshot below. In this case, I clicked “UNAPPROVE” because (1) Wordpress processes the unapprove command much faster than the “Mark as Spam” command and (2) I wanted to train Elaine’s re-activated Askimet plugin. I had to go through each page of approved comments and mark them as “unapproved” through the bulk actions feature. In doing so, the comments were moved to the pending comments folder.
When I was done, I went to the pending comments page and ran the “CHECK FOR SPAM” option shown above. All but five posts were moved into the spam folder. I deleted everything in the spam folder with one click, using the “DELETE ALL SPAM” button shown above.
Additional Filters. If you are having a spam problem from someone who is using a consistent IP or email address, you can add the spammer to your comment blacklist. To do this, click the “Discussion” link under the Settings Menu that is on the left side of your dashboard. Add the email address, URL or IP into the comment blacklist form and save.
In taking screen shots for this post, the re-activated Askimet was already at work and collected 5 spam comments. These comments were immediately moved into the spam folder.
I accessed Elaine’s spam folder, took a quick look to make sure valid comments (such as trackbacks) were not marked as spam, and then deleted everything in the spam folder using the “DELETE ALL SPAM” button.
Maintenance Tips.
- If you are experiencing an influx of spam like Elaine did, make sure your Askimet plugin is activated. Blog maintenance will become a nightmare if you don’t have Askimet active.
- If you see a plugin update alert (it will show up as a red icon next to your “PLUGINS” link in the dashboard, be sure and click the update. The plugin’s update will automatically install. From time to time, the Askimet plugin is updated, so you want to make sure you have the most current version.
- Use the bulk features available in your comment moderation controls.
- Check on your comment status regularly so that you don’t have to deal with thousands of spam comments in one sitting.
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At one point I had so many spam posts on my blog I had to get a buddy to do some PHP MyAdmin stuff and just delete all of them. A few thousand of them in fact! The captcha image verification is a very helpful item.
It can get overwhelming without a filter! Thanks for sharing, Lee.