WordPress has always been prone to spam attacks although it seems that during the last few months things have taken a turn for the worst. Many webmasters are now reporting that even WordPress blogs with comments and trackbacks turned off are finding approved spam comments on their sites. This new spam attack has been reported on all versions of WordPress including version 3.01.
So what can you do to protect your blog from spammers? Well firstly go to your blog’s backend, go to settings, then discussions and turn of the following options:
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
Allow people to post comments on new articles
Next login to your host Cpanel and using PHPAdmin run the following SQL commands on your blog’s SQL database
Turn All Trackbacks Off
Update wp_posts set ping_status=”closed”
Turn All Blog Comments Off
UPDATE wp_posts p SET comment_status = ‘closed’, ping_status = ‘closed’ WHERE comment_status = ‘open’;
Many are recommending install the Bad Behaviour Plug-in although I’m still testing the plug-in so use it at your own risk.
