Current Release: 0.75 (download)
Functional Summary
Enforces the following WordPress administration settings relating to treatment of comments:
- “An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below)” (under Options … Discussion)
- “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” ( also under Options … Discussion)
The plugin works by running after all the other Spam Karma 2 filters and ensuring that if either of these Discussions options are enabled within WordPress then for comments to which they apply (All comments in the case of (1)) the plugin ensures that the highest karma level a comment can achieve is -1 so that all comments must be moderated before appearing on your site.
Why?
Some people see this as a deficiency in Spam Karma 2, they think that even with the level of protection provided this WordPress option should be observed – now they have the choice. I have also had reports of people receiving a large influx of malicious comments, for example when linked from an online forum, that are from new authors (2) above helps to prevent these appearing on your site when running Spam Karma 2 to protect you against comment spammers.
Future Thoughts
The one main feature of the built-in WordPress comment spam protection system that is not covered by this plugin is integrating the Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist keyword lists. In general if you still really need these on top of all the normal checks that Spam Karma2 does then you need to look at adding some of them to the Spam Karma 2 blacklist – this maybe a daunting task as this uses RegEx’s rather than straight words. However you should find that taking a word from the Comment Moderation list and adding it to the Spam Karma 2 blacklist as a RegEx is as simple as converting Word into /Word/.
Installing
- Install Spam Karma 2
- Activate Spam Karma 2
- Unzip the plugin into the
sk2_pluginsdirectory within theSK2directory in your plugins folder. (e.g. wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_plugins/) - Disable the Captcha Check Treatment plugin in the Spam Karma 2 admin pages – otherwise commenters pushed into moderation by this plugin will be able to rescue themselves 🙁
- Relax knowing that all comments that pass Spam Karma 2’s checks will be marked for moderation as required by your WordPress Discussion settings
Bug reports welcome (Please comment below!)
Richard: sk2-moderate-plugin is compatible with WP2.0 (and 2.0.1).
The plugin to which I am referring in my last comment is a new sk2 plugin for requiring a minimum user level to post comments to a blog which I think is what Walt requires. This in its present state won’t be compatible with WP2.0 as it relies on the old 1.5.2 User Levels (0-> 10) rather than the new 2.0 User Roles.
Peter: I wanted to let you know that Tree Frog comment above appears to be spam. I received precisely the same comment at my blog at almost the same time as his comment here was published. Apparently, he’s piggy backing on all the folks listed in this comment thread in order to spam them. But what’s odd is that there’s no URLs. So I guess it’s a prank of some sort.
But here’s my real question. I have a commenter for whom I once approved a comment. But now I want to place him on the blacklist. I’ve tried sending each new comment of his to moderation thinking this would add his IP & URL to the blacklist. I’ve also tried manually adding the IP & URL via IP & URL Blacklist. But the comments keep getting approved & not moderated. Can you think of anything else I can do to get him back into moderation? How can I make your plugin always view him as a first-time commenter (& hence moderated)?
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I followed your instructions, however it stall allows the banned words to go through. Any suggestions
Tom: If you are running SK2 then the WordPress banned words list is ignored.
This plugin only reinstates the two options stated in the post not the banned words list.
However I believe you can add any words you wish to ban into the SK2 blacklist as “RegEx Content Blacklist” entries you will need to convert the banned words in to RegExs to use in this list.
Thanks for that westi
This comment follows e mails I sent about the moderation plugin appearing to no longer work. I just looked at my SK2 Catcha Check setting & it was Enabled. I’ve just disabled it per yr instructions above. Perhaps this will cause the plugin to resume working. I don’t know how Captcha Check was enabled since I’m certain I’d disabled it when I first installed yr plugin. Perhaps when upgrading SK2 to a new version it automatically enables Captcha Check??
Richard: Yes if you have the Captcha plugin enabled then commenters will still be able to rescue themselves from moderation negating the effects of the moderate plugin. If you disabled it in the past then I can only assume that it was re-enabled on upgrade for some reason.
Disabling should ensure that the moderate plugin works as advertised.
Hello! I’ve tried it and I think it’s a good plugin. But I missed one feature:
When I am commenting the first time at this blog my comment will be sent to the moderation queue. But as the writer of this comment you cannot see this, because it looks all normal for you. There should be a little hint like “comment has still to be moderated” or something else.
Or has this nothing to do with your plugin and depends from the used theme?
Jens: Yes this depends on the theme.
By default WordPress shows moderated comments to the comment poster – in order to give you the hint that your comment got through but is moderated.
In the theme you have to add code like the following (from the default theme) in the comments loop in comments.php/comments-popup.php to display a message to the user stating that there comment is in moderation.