January 30, 2005

Joy

I've just been hit with my first ever trackback spam. Does anyone know how I can delete the relevant pings? The Movable Type editing menu doesn't even let me figure out which posts they're attached to. (I think I can delete the pings if I can find them, but "page through every entry to see which ones got pinged" is not an acceptable method of finding them.)

Posted by Matt Weiner at January 30, 2005 12:08 PM
Comments

1. Navigate Main Menu > Opiniatrety Editing Menu > List & Edit Entries

2. Click the Entry Title

3. Scroll down to Advanced Options

4. Check TrackBack Pings

5. Click Delete Checked button

6. Save and Rebuild

Posted by: Matthew Mullins at January 31, 2005 09:33 AM

Well, the problem is, in step 2, I don't know which entry title to click. The "five most recent pings" box doesn't tell you which entries were pinged. I suppose ordinarily you can go to the pinging page and figure out which entry it's talking about, but the "handbags" and "prom dresses" pages don't actually seem to link any of my entries :)

Posted by: Matt Weiner at January 31, 2005 12:00 PM

Sorry I was't reading as closely as I should have this morning. I use Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist which seems to have staved off trackback spamming on the three blogs I host. It is a fairly straight forward installation.

Posted by: Matthew Mullins at January 31, 2005 02:06 PM

I use MT-Blacklist for comment spams but it didn't catch these--maybe because I don't update the master spam list. I don't actually mind trackback spam as much because it doesn't destroy potential discussion the way comment spam does. Actually, maybe MT-Blacklist will help me automatically de-spam the trackbacks....

Yeah, there's that little dropdown menu that lets you search through "comments" or "pings" for banned URLs. Duh. Sorry for bothering you.

(The spam was on this entry, which I kind of like--and the NYTimes link actually still contains all the information you need to understand it, though the ad with the kinda disturbing has gone away, which I guess is a good thing in the scheme of the world.)

Posted by: Matt Weiner at January 31, 2005 03:09 PM