(Spam) Limiting the server hits

  • I long ago solved my spam troubles using Akismet and SpamKarma jointly. However, my host is now complaining that spammers (which I don’t even notice anymore thanks to these plugins) are abusing wp-comments-post.php, which in turn overloads the server (or so they claim).

    Is there anything I can do about this ? One option they suggested was adding a captcha plugin (which I thought sounded stupid, since I guess that would probably generate *more* load on the server), and another option was to rename the wp-comments-post.php file.

    Is my opinion on the the captcha option unfounded ?
    Would the second one really help ? How do I go about it ? Is there any other mention of the file name outside of the theme’s “comments.php” and “comments-popup.php” (which I found and corrected too) ?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • I think Bad Behaviour, not a plugin, but a script, was made to reduce the load on the server. Don’t know the link, but google it and it’ll turn up.

    You’re right about the captcha thing taking up more resources, it has to generate an image everytime someone tries to leave a comment!

    Renaming wp-comments.php will certainly help, but you have to reference it somewhere with its proper name — some spambots are clever enough to find it again.

    What posts does it affect? Because you can disable comments on old posts, which will also help to reduce server load.

    What kind of volume of spam are you getting, by the way?

    Bad Behaviour lives here:

    https://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/bad-behavior/

    Thread Starter Gap

    (@gap)

    Will try it. Thanks for the ideas and comments ?? Akismet caught about 2500+ spam comments over the last two weeks. I fail to see how that could be enough to cause server problems, really…

    Well, Akismet has to take each comment, send it to the akismet service, then process it depending on what the service says.

    Leaving a comment involves a database call. All database calls are quite resource-intensive, but writing to the database is especially intensive. Every comment that’s left is written to the database, even if it’s spam.

    Good news! It turns out bad-behaviour is a plugin after all ??

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    Bad Behavior will reduce the server load from such spam comments, but be sure to read the instructions and edit the BB plugin to turn off the logging! Otherwise it’s very database intensive.

    I was getting 60 spam a day, all of it caught by Akismet. After installing BB, that number dropped to about 6 a day. Akismet still caught it, but the rest got dropped before they made it that far.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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