• I’m a fairly new migrant from Blogger to WordPress and have encountered a blizzard of very unwelcome comment spam. In trying to install various plugins to combat this, I’ve managed to mess up my installation so that new comments don’t appear. I’d very much appreciate a pointer as to what file/s I should replace in order to sort this out. If it’s any use, I did back up a week or so ago and received a file called eleventh_wp_20060428_738.sql.gz, but I have no idea what to do with the sql file once I’ve decompressed it. Many thanks for any help you can give!

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • trying to install various plugins
    That’s not very helpful if you really want somebody to help you. Please, give us more details: what plugins, what happened etc.
    Help us to help you 🙂

    Thread Starter 11v

    (@11v)

    Okay, thanks. I now have the following plugins in my plugin management page:
    Deactivated – Akismet, Anti Spam image, Did you pass math? Google search widget
    Activated – del.icio.us widget, sidebar widget, WordPress database backup

    I also attempted to install the trencaspammers plugin. However the instructions require code to be copied to two files – wp-comments-post.php and wp-comments.php. I copied over the code from wp-comments-post.php, but then couldn’t find a file on my server called wp-comments.php so I replaced wp-comments-post.php with the original file backup and gave up.

    I am able to post logged in as admin, but when I log out and try to add a comment, the page reloads, but the comment doesn’t appear and it isn’t logged in the Manage > Comments or Awaiting Moderation screens.

    In the Options > Discussion screen, all the options are checked – except – ‘An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)’ and ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment’.

    Hope that’s more helpful!

    First of all, if that trenca-whatever plugin talks about wp-comments.php – it has to be an ancient piece, last time WP used such a file was in v.1.2.x. If the plugin doesn’t have an updated version, forget it!

    For spam control I’d activate Akismet and BadBehavior and SpamKarma:
    http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/
    http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
    Based on the feedback in the forum nothing is more effective than these!

    Finally, if you meesed around with core files (which shouldn’t be required by a decent plugin!) – my advice would be: upload a fresh copy of the WP files. You do NOT have to re-install, just delete the odl files and upload a fresh untouched version.

    Thread Starter 11v

    (@11v)

    Thanks for responding Moshu and the advice re best plugins to use. Two problems – first, I’ve deactivated Akismet because although it caught my comment spam, I was unable to access past the first page as there was no go to next page link. I therefore couldn’t be sure it wasn’t treating legitimate comments as spam.

    More importantly, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘odl’ files – I can’t see anything with such a name or suffix and don’t want to overwrite anything that would affect what I have so far. Could you explain?

    Your continued assistance is much appreciated.

    I think that was a typo for old files.

    Thank you LB, yes, it was a typo – sorry. OLD.

    Thread Starter 11v

    (@11v)

    Aha… okay, but still, which ones are the old files – what files shouldn’t I write over to avoid losing settings? I backed up my wp file and copied these files over:

    wp-comments-post.php
    wp-commentsrss2.php
    wp-feed.php
    wp-links-opml.php
    wp-login.php
    wp-mail.php
    wp-pass.php
    wp-rdf.php
    wp-register.php
    wp-rss.php
    wp-rss2.php
    wp-settings.php
    wp-trackback.php
    xmlrpc.php

    When I attempted to reload my blog I got a page full of error messages. I’ve restored from my backup, but am still unable to post comments to my blog unless I log in as admin.

    Except the customized theme files you can always delete everything and upload new files – of the same version, of course!!!
    No data is stored in any file, everything is in the database.
    If you messed around with the files, delete them mercilessly and upload fresh copies 🙂

    What version are you using? Are those above ALL the files at the WP root? index? wp-config? [keep the config file, don’t delete it]

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

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