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Blog advice

TheOldMole Aug 19 2005 10:33 AM

Suddenly, in the comments section of my blog, I'm getting inundated with junk/spam. Is this common? How do I stop it? Well, I know it's common as in "vulgar."

Yancy Street Gang Aug 19 2005 11:02 AM

Do you have a link to your blog? I'm curious to see how comments are posted. It might provide a clue about how to stop the spam. Of course, if you're not able to change the way comments are posted, you might not have many alternatives.

TheOldMole Aug 19 2005 11:52 AM

http://opusforty.blogspot.com/ Now also part of my signature line, if I did it right.

Yancy Street Gang Aug 19 2005 01:44 PM

I took a look, and spotted some of the spam you mentioned. It's possible that it was keyed in by somebody with a lot of time on his hands, but I'd guess it was somehow created by any automated process, but it may have been. The link to post a comment contains the blog ID and the post ID. A clever "spider" could troll known blog pages, look for the links, and then electronically submit the spam text. The only way I can think of to prevent it would be to disable anonymous comments, if such a thing is possible. (In other words, only allow the "Blogger" identity.) It may reduce the number of good comments that you get as well as reducing the spam. You'd have to decide if you thought that would have a positive or negative impact on your site. Can you delete the spam posts? Or are you stuck with them?

TheOldMole Aug 19 2005 03:32 PM

That was actually going to be my next question. Can I delete them, or am I stuck with them?

Yancy Street Gang Aug 19 2005 03:41 PM

That's probably a question for the gang at blogspot.com.