The Playground

Thanks to a very timely email I received from Tim Appnel, I have installed two new plugins that I hope will solve my comments and trackback spamming problem: MT-Akismet and MTAutoBan. Tim explained how they work together:

MT-Akismet is a spam filter plugin which automatically submits all comments (and trackbacks) received to Akismet, a distributed spam filtering service, to be rated ham or spam. MTAutoBan can be periodically run and will write out a htaccess file blocking the IP addresses of junk once it goes over a certain threshold like 3 junked comments in the past x days. AutoBan is really helpful because it blocks most spam floods without starting up MT, usually starting up so many instances of MT during a flood is what buries a server. What's nice is that AutoBan will eventually release an IP address from being blocked. The built-in MT IP Blocking keeps an IP address until you remove it.

Tim also suggested that closing comments and trackbacks on older entries reduces the likelihood of spam and attack. He recommends mt-closure, a script that can be periodically run as a cron-job to close entries over so many days old.

I am extremely grateful to Tim for going to the trouble of contacting me after my hosting providers had disabled my comments and trackback scripts for causing their servers to overload. Everything is back up and working now.