Wordpress Comment Spam

[AJQS]

I'm running wordpress with Photocrati theme for my website, and I have turned off all the commenting settings I can see, yet I'm still getting hundreds of spam comments a month. How the hell are they getting through, I just want to turn them off completely everywhere! Any ideas?

 

[frank]

Could it be via the RSS feeds link you have at the bottom of your page?

 

[dankellys]

Are they not trackback's rather than comments? You should get an email for each spam "comment" you are getting. Does the 1st line of the email say:

"A new trackback on the post..."?

If so, you need to turn trackbacks off.

 

[AJQS]

Could it be via the RSS feeds link you have at the bottom of your page?

How would I find out?

Are they not trackback's rather than comments? You should get an email for each spam "comment" you are getting. Does the 1st line of the email say:

"A new trackback on the post..."?

If so, you need to turn trackbacks off.

I don't get emails about them at all, despite it being set to email me?

 

[dankellys]

Hmm, strange that your not receiving the emails. Go to Dashboard -> Home. There should be a "Recent Comments" box there, it may say in there if it is a comment, or a track back.

To disable trackbacks Go to 'Settings -> Discussion' and make sure the following is untucked: "Allow link notifications from other blogs".

Then, to remove them from posts/pages which already exist, follow this tutorial:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutori...kbacks-and-pings-on-existing-wordpress-posts/

Note however, the tutorial above involves directly modifying the SQL database, so make sure you make a full backup first.