I delete many spam comments left in our Guestbook. Most are not worth sharing, but every now and then I see one that catches my attention. One example is a spam comment that has now been left for moderation for posting in our Guestbook twice. The comment is posted by user killer for hire and it advertises a service which “lets you find experts for occasionally dangerous tasks.” It states that “contractors are qualified in managing complex jobs” before a URL, which includes the words hitman, assassin, and killer. “This service ensures safe interactions between requestors and specialists.” What in the world? I would have posted the screenshot but I would rather not indirectly advertise the actual URL. I did not click the URL, but there is a non-zero chance it leads to a casino or marijuana site. Weird stuff.
Tag: guestbooks
New Guestbook System
I had been planning to use the Gwolle Guestbook plugin here (I cannot use it on The New Leaf Journal because it relies on JQuery, which I disable over there). However, I decided that it was too heavy for what will probably be a light use-case. Over on The New Leaf Journal, I had briefly tried a comments-based Guestbook with an open source spam blocklist. However, we did not get any legitimate entries in that Guestbook before I shuttered it on account of the fact that a small number of spam comments were somehow showing up as published despite my requiring moderation in the WordPress settings. Wanting a Guestbook, I decided to give it a try on both sides while adding Antispam Bee, an entirely local anti-spam plugin, to my set-up. I also added a Block List Updater from the same developer to keep the open source-sourced blocklist up to date without my manual intervention. Finally, I use a plugin called Plugin Load Filter with allows me to explicitly limit Antispam Bee to specific pages. For example, this means that Antispam Bee only functions on the Guestbook page of The New Leaf Journal at the moment. We will see how it goes. But the way, while this site’s Guestbook looks solid (if I do so humbly submit myself), take a look at what I did on The New Leaf Journal side of things.