As of its most recent version, b2evolution has a problem with trackback spam. Several b2e users (including Whoo and Graham) have suggested renaming the directory that contains (among other things) the trackback script. In theory, this should eliminate spam from bots but should not effect legitimate commenters and pingers.
Here's a perl script I wrote to automate Whoo and Graham's suggestion: hidehtsrv.pl. I suggest creating a cron job to run hidehtsrv.pl periodically. Note: this script requires another of my perl scripts, randpass.pl, a pseudo-random string generator.
Here's a b2evolution forum thread about trackback spam, and here's a b2evolution forum thread about why renaming is effective.
See also my post about comment and referrer spam and my b2evolution forums post about this solution.
Dan,
Excellent! I’ve been wanting to write such a script, ever since I found something similar that was done for MT in May.
I’m renaming manually now, but will have to give your solution a go. I also was playing with using entity values and special characters in the advanced.php file, but was met with only limited success.
Three cheers.
-stk
hi. i’m trying to install your scripts, but i’m getting a 500 internal server error:
Premature end of script headers: /home/ladrilio/public_html/cgi-bin/trackback_spam/hidehtsrv.pl
any idea about?
thanks in advance
rebuscador, that’s usually caused by incorrect permissions on a perl script. Make sure to “CHMOD 755”.
Probably a dumb question, but where are the files hidehtsrv.pl and randpass.pl? When I click on either of those links above I get the directory listing of your /files/ directory. In that directory there are .php files with those names, but you can’t get the software out… click on them to save them and all you get is some html file with error messages in it.
Haven’t all b2e users switched to WordPress yet?! 😉
Not a dumb question, Andrew. I just haven’t fully recovered from having hosted my site with a dumb hosting company. Those links are all fixed, now. Thanks for alerting me to the problem.