404 after submitting comment with very specific url

  • I’ve tried this on two separate installations and get the same issue.

    A commenter wanted to include a link to a page archived in archive.org, but when he submitted the comment, he got a 404. Removing the archive.org url correctly posts the comment.

    I have tried submitting an otherwise blank comment with https://web.archive.org/ and this gives a 404. So does web.archive.org/.

    But deleting the trailing / (to make it web.archive.org) correctly posts the comment.

    The following all post correctly:

    archive.org/
    z.archive.org/
    zzz.archive.org/
    web.archivz.org/
    web.archive.com/

    …so, why does web.archive.org/ give the 404?

    Both sites I’ve tried this on are live so I’m not keen to go through disabling each/all plugins.

    I am using templates created using Artisteer for both sites but I have briefly activated Twenty Fifteen on one site and it still gives the same problem.

    There have been reports (here and elsewhere) of blank pages after submitting comments but most of these seem to be from many years ago and don’t seem to relate to this issue with urls

    Anyone any idea what’s going wrong?

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • Are you using Akismet? Or another spam fighting plugin?

    This is just a guess… but I can imagine a lot of potential spam opportunities arising from archive.org … ie if you are a comment spammer and your actual site has been spammed to death and is now blocked, instead, use an archived/cached version of the site instead and include that in all your comments.

    Thread Starter zeno001

    (@zeno001)

    Thanks, Colin.

    Yes, using Akismet (and Wordfence). Good idea about spamming, but surely Akismet would either just delete the comment or put it in the spam bin, not give a 404?

    To be honest, I am not 100% sure of the default behaviour… but if I was a betting man, I would happily stick ￡50 on it being either Akismet or WordFence ??

    Perhaps try disabling one at a time to isolate which it is… then if you really want to know have a quick look or post a thread in the appropriate support forum, eg:

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/akismet

    Thread Starter zeno001

    (@zeno001)

    Colin

    I don’t have any non-production installations I could try this on – not too keen to do it on a live site. But maybe I’ll have to do that unless anyone can verify it on a blank site?

    Turning off Akismet for 2 mins to do a quick test won’t have a negative impact… even if you are a very high traffic site, worst case scenario you will get 1-10 spam comments which you can just delete afterwards.

    That to me is the most likely of the two to be causing this.

    Thread Starter zeno001

    (@zeno001)

    OK, I started going though deactivating plugins one at a time. After I deactivated and then re-activated Jetpack, I can’t reconnect to WordPress.com! I just get an error page, so I’ll need to go and fix that first.

    However, I had checked about nine plugins and none of them seemed to be the culprit.

    Thread Starter zeno001

    (@zeno001)

    Finally got Jetpack reconnected and then went through all the remaining plugins, deactivating them, trying to post the comment (web.archive.org/) then reactivating them in turn. Got the same 404 error each and every time.

    I’ve not tried deactivating all plugins simultaneously but it would seem less likely that would show anything… or would it?

    Sorry just to clarify, can you confirm you tried deactivating Akismet specifically and testing that?

    Thread Starter zeno001

    (@zeno001)

    Yes, disabling Akismet made no difference.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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