New Anti-Spam tool

Thanks Kitten.
Does this replace your previous plugin, or is it an alternative ?
Added it to https://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/spam/
About this list – do people want the various tools to be listed in any particular way ? By release date ? By type ? By anything else ?
Basically, is there a way of making that list more user-friendly ?
As it grows, although we can point people at it, we’ll have them coming back and saying “But which one ?”
I can’t rate by number of people using (I don’t know), I can’t rate by feedback (because the majority won’t) so any suggestions are very welcome.

I have done three simple steps to stop spam:
– only allowing use of wp-comments-post.php for registred users.
– telling them about that in wp-comments.php
– on registration, sending them an email with their password (to confirm their e-mail-address).
You can get the altered wp-comments.php and wp-register.php at Wellard’s World and a modified wp-comments-post.php at my own page.
So, people could spam me, but only if they give me their e-mail-address and register, which I don’t think any automated bot would do.
I believe the only way to go around this now (except there are any bugs) would be to create a bot that registers using a free-email-account before posting.
If that happens I see only one option: someone would have to rewrite most of the administration-module so that the admin will have to approve new users before they will be able to post comments.
So, unregistred and new users would be Level 0 without any rights, Level 1 would be allowed to post comments and only users level 2 and above would be able to post real articles.

So, Kitten, how do you install your mod onto a weblog? Where do I put it and what do I change in the existing parts of the weblog to get it to work? Thanks!

Save the phps as a php file
Upload to plugins
Activate
That should be it.

Podz,
– Spaminator is to stop spam at the source.
– Spam Words is to harvest the spam that gets thru for IPs, emails, and URL to add to the spam words list.
So they don’t overlap, and both can be useful on a blog.

Thanks – I’ll add that to the information.

Stay tuned for a “bot booby trap” script, so that spambots trying to spam your site will automatically add themselves to the blacklist.

I wish there was some sort of vebosity so I could tell that it’s working, or a menu of some kind, has I just got flooded with spam and a lot of it go through the auto spam words auto block even though I just installed Spaminator. How does it work? How can I even know it’s working?

You’ll know if it’s working if the spam stops ??
But you need to be agressively adding IPs and domains to your spam words list.
The number of strikes can be ajusted too, the default is 4, change that to 2 for really weeding out spam.
If the spam is making it onto your blog, and not getting caught by the built in moderation system, then you don’t have enough words/IPs in the spam words list to catch the spam anyway.
Spaminator is a way to block the nastiest spam from being posted, and keeping your mod queue clean. The normal moderation system is still needed.
Oh, and make sure it’s activated on the plugins page.

Ah, OK, I see, thanks.

I’ve posted a new version, with whitelisting checks.
https://mookitty.co.uk/devblog/archives/2004/10/31/kittens-spaminator/

Thanks a lot for the plugin, Kitten. I had commented (as Sameer) on your blog about the “empty delimiter” errors I was getting on activating the spaminator plugin.
I installed the plugin all over again and now it works just fine ??
I have a query. Kittens-spaminator plugin obviously takes advantage of the spam words collected by your Spam Words plugin. But this plugin would delete the offending comments and not hold them for moderation, wouldn’t it? But will it harvest newer spamwords from the spam comments it deletes?

And ohh! I wanted to post the above comment on your blog. But when I tried posting it there, I got a message saying I was banned from commenting and my comment was deleted! ??

I’m not sure if Spaminator is the culprit, but I installed it yesterday and now I cannot see anything at all on my site. I’ve checked that index.php is there, and it is, but basically I am getting a blank page. I can’t even login as admin to deactivate the plug-in because I can’t see the link to do so.
Help! How can I log in? Once I’ve done that, I will check whether it is Spaminator.
Jeremy

Thanks Kitten. I deleted it and everything is back to normal. But I don’t have time right now to check whether Spaminator was the culprit.
Jeremy