Author Banning in MovableType
I use MovableType 3.1 and it has a decent feature of IP banning. Problem is, comment spammers change IP addresses very quickly. I needed another tool in the battle against the rising tide of spam.
I basically copied the Ban IP functionality, renamed any reference of IP to author and voila: MT_authorban is born!
The functionality works for me but because I had to make changes to a number of the core files, any upgrade will overwrite what I've done. Feel free to download MT_authorban. I'll let the MT crew in on what I've done and maybe they'll integrate it into 3.2. :)
To install the update, just unzip the files and upload into your movabletype directory (normally /mt/
). Just overwrite the files that are already there. Don't forget to make a backup of the stuff on the server first! I'd hate for this to mess up your configuration.
Leave a comment if you end up using it. Thanks!
Conversation
I'd rather teach MT-Blacklist that comments containing that name are to be denied :-)
Anyway, who prevents your bad visitors from slightly altering their name? Like 'Gabri3l' or something like that?
But changing your name defeats the whole purpose of comment spamming: to drive results to your page based on link popularity on a keyword. If they start making up words then they can't build any popularity on that keyword.
I had originally started modifying the MT-DSBL plugin to do author name checking but decided I didn't want to embark on building an interface for adding new keywords. Thus, I hacked the MT source instead. :)
I really enjoy reading your articles. Keep up the great work.
TBoardenson