georgianlady

I have bad behavior installed for the last several days. I haven’t had any of the “spam” of the sort I had before that, the “nonsense” kind with them faking their name and putting three actual blog post urls of other people in the comment.

BUT … I do have the same referrer problem, they come in beforehand and get my wp-commentsrss2.php … it’s annoying and I don’t want it… the referrers are in my CG-Referrer list and I hate it, they come in groups of 10 to maybe 20 or more, per domain referrer name.

I had only CG-Referrer before I installed bad-behavior and I don’t know how it’s working, as I thought it would bounceout what I had in the blacklist … I have looked in it and surely the right things are in it, CG-Referrer is logging phentermine and texas-holdem and other junk, but not labeling it as bad, or blocking it. I didn’t have the “PUNT” option turned on, so I did that then, and still nothing was “punted”. I can hit the “TAG” button in the CG-Referrer interface and that tags whatever is in the database already, but still nothing new gets tagged or blocked by itself.

I did the PUNT feature in CG-Referrer for a day or two before intalling Bad-Behavior … and then turned that PUNT off once I had BB installed, and still they were coming in and getting logged in CG-Referrer as visitors pulling in the commentsrss2.php and not getting automatically tagged or blocked … and neither were they getting blocked or tagged with any code in the Bad-Referrer database (veiwable via MySQL)

Today I got a crap comment from a marketer who has software to find blogs and views *pam as good for blogs.

I had a post on *pam the other day and called it by it’s full name. That’s howcome I had that comment. Automated find keywords and post a comment and a link … automatic and it’s being marketed on their site.

Now, I have blogs for my own sake, to write about things and anyone else is welcome to read them and submit real comments relevent. Blogs are for people for their own purposes, not for marketers and affiliates of products. Urg!

At any rate, in Bad-Behavior log it IS denying some comments, and I haven’t had one of those old *pam type comments in moderations since I installed it.

But it’s allowing commentsrss2.php draws from things it logs same as cg-referrer does, the *pam-word domains… which were always a precursor to taking comment hits later.

BTW I have WP-Hashcash installed all along too. FWIW

I’d just like to know if anything is capable of bouncing, punting, whatever you want to call it, and making it notabley noticable by the site owner in the logs. As far as I can tell, none of the commentsrss2.php GETS are denied, and none are tagged with deny codes, unless with CG-Referrer I manually press “Tag” but as I said, that’s only for things in the database already and has not done anything to future same visitors …

I only want to do this since *they* have no need of my site information if they aren’t legit visitors, and they surely are not.

You have to put the comments template info in the actual template you use for a PAGE (just as you have in your normal blog posts, usually right after “the content” in a normal blog entry template.) Do that in your Presentation area, change the Page … and to make a new template for a Page, upload a new file in like manner of the actual Page Template, and change it to suit your needs. You can have different Page Templates, and choose them when you make a new page, or edit a page.

FWIW that’s what it sounds like you are looking for.

Here are a few things to read about it:

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Pages

Just look at any of your normal templates then to grab the comment template code and formulate it how you wish.

From what I could tell, you have your pictures in wp-gallery, as the picture links on individual pages link to the right picture if clicked but you are calling img tags for: ./wp-content/plugins/lazy-gallery/lazy-img.php?... so there must be something in what you have in your plugin that is looking somewhere different for the thumbs, not coded right, or something.

I’m not saying that is it for sure, but your pictures are in a folder at the blog root, and your plugin is in the plugins folder. I don’t know what your plugin is like, but the gallery types I’ve used reside pictures in the same place as most of the plugin files, or have a specific config file to put the path to pictures and/or thumbs, etc.

So check into all your plugin files for paths and such that need to be changed.

Just ideas to explore.

Beel, I do have that in my wp-config.php file.

My problem is that I know that there have been several yahoo slurps and google bots on my site since I got this plugin going again, but they aren’t logging in BOTS, and one different bot did log in bots, but it was a blogs ping-related bot after I posted something, the google and yahoo bots aren’t showing up under bots, or anywhere, but they’ve been there, for sure (I also looked in my site access logs to see what was there and also did see them listed on my wp-useronline plugin page in-real-time).

So basically, internal movement isn’t being logged by the searchenginebots, thus far, though if I search google for something I know is on my site, and click the link, I am logged as coming from a search and that is under “recent” and “searches”.

But the other thing that is still lacking is if I do an internal search, it’s not logging in the “searches” query listing, but is in the “recent” listing.

I have all four of the things that are available to put into wp-config for cg-referrer … as:

$cgr_uniqueOncePerDay = false;
$cgr_trackInternalMovement = true;
$cgr_doBlacklistChecks = true;
$cgr_puntBlacklisted = false;

I took the whole thing off my WP install and all I can recall is it referred to “line 681” in the plugin and was definitely mentioning “no such file or directory” in regards to the METAR file …

When I did uninstall it the first time, I took it out, then reloaded the whole thing as a brand new plugin install. There was definitely NO file put into the cache folder. I didn’t take it all out right away, reloaded my site index page many times over the next several minutes. The actual part on that page I had two local stations called up, as well as Lufkin, TX. All three showed data that was different from each other, as in working right, maybe, I didn’t compare it to any other weather site info, but each function call had that same error on it, and I rechecked and rechecked over and over for anything in the cache file. Nothing ever showed up.

Like I said before, I had done chmod 777 after this problem started, but that shouldn’t be a problem, it worked flawlessly the day before and all the days before that. It must be somehow that DH changed something on me suddenly. So it’s the fopen allow_url thing that’s the problem, I’m sure of it as far as I can be with what I tested out FWIW.

I’m not going to “try again” right now, maybe later. I’m in the middle of other things currently. A fix being done first to the files is what I’d desire anyhow, so I’ll wait until there is one out. Thanks!

I got CG-Referrer install again on my old upgraded blog and commented out that same line for tracking users, and voila, it caught me in the logs. So it does work. But I do have a new question about the new version:

my old cg-referrer install logged the “searches” all in the “search” area of the plugin, that would be external searches coming into the site, as well as internal searches.

I tested an internal search, it showed up under “recent” showing the search string of the url, but isn’t showing up under “searches”.

Is that something in the code that I can hack … to break it out or put it into the search … or something?

Also a question about Bots and such, there is a Yahoo bot on my site right now, but it’s not logging into the BOTS area. I have wp-useronline plugin, so I can see they are active right now, have changed pages a few times in the last few minutes with no logging of them in BOTS or BLOCKED or anywhere that I can find, have yet to look into phpmyadmin.

I just checked wp-useronline again, and there is now a googlebot on my site, and that’s not logging into BOTS either, so I’m only querying about it, as to if it should show up there, or if there may be a problem, or what’s the possible answer that I just don’t know that you might. Thanks!

Thank you David! That did it for at least my NEW 1.5.1.3 install. I have to re-install CG-Referrer on my older upgrade … I took it out as a plugin. It wasn’t logging anything by me, but usually I got lots of search engine traffic, I mean, several a day at least, plus at least a few people searching for something, and I hadn’t gotten any at all, nothing at all, since upgrading, which was odd … and having the same experience with the new blog install was precisely bothersome in not being able to test it out as working by tracking myself, since that’s the only way to test out a new install. ??

So I’ll report back on the other blogs. Thanks again!

I started getting this error many hours after I upgraded WP, and, matter of fact, I did not overwrite the wp-content folder at all, I left it totally alone during the entire upgrade process.

This error happened late and so I went and did just as you are writing about, chmod it to 777, I also went and read stuff and so I tried setting permissions back to 755, as it had been running all along that way previously. I never had done a 777 chmod and something I’ve read at DH states that 755 is what I need anyhow.

The point here is, I have chmod’d 777 and 755 both, and neither caused the plugin to work correctly since it started throwing the error. It’s a sudden difference, and I have read about the allow_open thing other places, and looking into the inner workings of weathericon.php it does have two “fopen” statements, and that’s what the error I was getting was about, I didn’t copy it, and can’t recall the exact language of the error, but it’s the same one that I’ve seen other places regarding allow_open being disallowed on the server and “fopen” no longer working.

It is something that I don’t care to delve deeper into. I ran this plugin just fine before, and now suddenly can’t, despite multiple attempts to “fix” it. It’s not anything important, so I just am moving on, and wanted to write out my saga to add to the thread. It might be that someone else can help, or it might help someone else.

It’s simple probably to re-write that part of the code to do something else, but I have my mind occupied with bigger fish which I need to fry, and am not really a coder, just an HTML CSS coder with a bit of PHP savy understanding, not much though. ??

To bring this thread back to life: I upgraded to WP 1.5.1.3 the other day on one of my blogs, and now today I ditched WeatherIcon 2.0 … it does use (fopen) and the plugin was throwing an error a mile wide on the side of my front page on top on any call to the plugin, about “fopen”. Open the weathericon.php plugin file and you can find two “fopen” items. It’s connected with opening the meta cache file. That’s exactly the trouble with it. I deactivated my plugin first, then deleted it, redownloaded it, uploaded it again, activated it, had three different stations called, and all did the same thing: drew in data, but there was no file ever created in the cache folder, as it was before.

I’ve been with DH since May, and I ran WeatherIcon 2.0 from then to now, and suddenly, without me doing it, it doesn’t work, I only upgraded WP the other day.

So something for my site changed suddenly. At least my sidebar has wittled down in height and width. ?? (the error is gone since I ditched the plugin, and the space the plugin data took up is now vacant. I liked the plugin, but am not super-needy for it, thankfully!)

My situation, I had said I’d try a few other things and report back here, David.

I have done only this: deleted it all from my one blog that I had the trouble with. I have not yet installed it again.

Secondly I just installed it on my NEW install of WP. Just installing it, activating it and having CG-Referrer create the DB Tables … It isn’t logging any activity that I myself do. The old version did on my other blogs.

My Host is “dreamhost” for all the sites I’m running WP on. I will just see what happens the rest of the day.

Let me know if there is any hack I can do if it does automatically know who I am and not log info on me ?? at the least. Please! ??

I have one older install of WP that is running the older CG-Referrer still … it’s logging away nicely. I’m reticent to upgrade it now. I feel unprotected without CG-Referrer watching my backdoor, windows, cracks in the walls, seeing who walks down the sidewalk, rings the doorbell, leaves mail in the mailbox. ??

David, Hmmm, well then, I’ll do what I was going to do: take it completely out, even out of the DB. I then have another blog that the old version is running on that has not yet been upgraded to WP 1.5.1.3, same as with the blog I just did yesterday and encounted the problem, so I’ll see what happens with that one … and then I have another new install of a 1.5.1.3 blog that I do not yet have CG-Referrer on … and I’ll see what happens with that if I install it. I have no other plugins on that blog yet.

I’ll post what happens … hopefully that will give me the answers, if it does work on one of them at the least, then maybe it’s another plugin not playing nice. I’ll check and see what’s what later, and report back here.

Thanks!

David, I just upgraded from WP 1.5 to 1.5.1.3 yesterday.

I had CG-Referrer installed and working fine before that, not sure which version, but it was the last one I had installed which did not have all the admin functions that the current version of CG-Referrer has. (CGPP1531)

In any case, the old version of CG-Referrer I had didn’t work right after I upgraded WP 1.5 to 1.5.1.3 (wp-admin links for CG-Referrer couldn’t load the files linked), so I deactivated CG-Referrer as a plugin, deleted all the CG PowerPack files, and then downloaded the new powerpack and uploaded all the stuff correctly and re-activated … and nothing is logging now. Nothing at all. All the admin screens show all the data from before just fine, but nothing new is logging at all.

I’ve reloaded everything, gone into my other files and looked for anything old, found the “logreferrer” bit I’d put into my index.php previously under the older plugin, took that out, nothing still would log.

I then put the four things into wp-config that I can control, and that did nothing.

I’m not sure what to do now. I have all the right pieces for the plugin. The plugin is reading the MySQL database fine, it’s reading all that older data, but not logging.

I did delete via PURGE in the admin screen, older than 1 month data, just for the hay of it finally too.

Hoping you can help me out with some kind of info to get it running again!

CG Stuff
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I deleted all the cg-powerpack files and reuploaded them. I did search the blacklist.php for sml338 but didn’t find it. I mean I used a search feature and IT didn’t find it. I didn’t really look for it with my own eyes. By adding it myself the “search” I used found THAT one. Just to explain why I added it. I added that as I uploaded the new cg-powerpack yesterday evening, so I couldn’t tell if it was my adding it or the new blacklist.php ??

I am not using CG-AntiSpam, I’m gun-shy of it from my first experience with it in March. (remember me, somehow something happened and it marked a slew of past comments as spam, that were legit comments, and I had to manually reinstate each one, with much thanks to that lovely PagedCommentEditing plugin!)

I have another hits script monitoring my site and see that some of the actual IP’s listed on those TRACKBACK SPAM I’m getting are logging as coming to the site and loading a specific permalink with “/wp-comments-post.php/” tagged onto the end.

That actual post isn’t ever showing up as being commented on. But anyhow I edited that post and un-bulleted “allow pings” so since then the trackback spam slowed down a bit … mostly the stuff has been coming every 3 or 5 minutes, or with 20 minutes between sometimes, last night they were every hour, about, with two hours between some, then this morning a three hour lag, then it ramped up to the current every few minutes or so.

I’d be happy to use CG-AntiSpam if I knew what to do with it, like had a clue what to do instead of just trying to figure it out, as I did last time. All I did last time was click on something innocently named, I don’t recall what, just something that was there when I had just turned the plugin on … and it instantly did what it did and I immediately deactivated it. So I don’t even have a clue what it is I did. Hence, being gunshy.

My experiement, all I did was deactivate CG-Referrer at first, and nothing was different. So I deleted the plugin files and reloaded them. So it’s not affected by CG-Referrer at all.

My Question that hasn’t been answered is: how does a Trackback come in and get logged, does it get logged, in other words, or does it not?

CG-AntiSpam, I just looked at the readme file, and it must have been that I clicked “Tag” and it tagged over 300 of my legit comments that time I tried it in March for two seconds.

I know that I am looking for a way to reject (or bounce) trackback spam without turning off trackbacks. HashCash seems to be working for stopping spammy regular comments, I guess I should take a look to see what the Karma things do after all. I was trying to not do that. I was A-OK with the current setup since March 22, it was great, no spam at all, then BLAM! The trackback kind hit hard yesterday. Ho hum it never ends for long. ??

sml338 hasn’t showed up since earlier today, the last post here I said 231, and they are sitting at 233 since right after I posted. So anyhow, I’m just rattling this stuff out since it’s all connected.

So I guess I’m not looking for what CG-Anti-Spam does but I’ll continue to monitor it’s development, etc. CG-Referrer bounced what it could and WordPressHashCash nixed the rest of the junk.

——————–

Other Spam Stuff
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Two other spam types are alphabet nuthin types, and not real email address given, not even right format for an email address, sometimes those are combined as one.

They are just annoying flippant things, is there something to blacklist those with the internal blacklist …?

They get past HashCash, are comments I’ve gotten here and there, not often, just sometimes on WP 1.5, any of my installs.
Just my main one is the one that gets all that junk above.

My other blogs see little comment action and I just would like to get rid of the alphabet nonsense and the comments that have no email address or not formatted as email address.

My blogs all require a real email address, so why does putting in “me” or “https://google” or some such thing validate as an email address in the comment submission?

??

I am using CG-Referer (but not CG-AntiSpam) and the HASHCASH plugin.

They had stopped the massive spam hits that I had since upgrading to WP 1.5 in February, and are/were working nicely, I hadn’t had a spam comment from March 22 until one gobbly gook nonsence alphabet one on April 8th, then nothing spam tagged at all … until last night TRACKBACK Spam started hitting.

I have 27 of them thus far.

Most of them get tagged as spam due to my internal blacklist entries for poker, but a few were getting put into Moderation.

All of them are about poker except for one which is an “i hate u” message that may or maynot be the same spammer, but anyhow, 26 of them are all poker related and have a URL entered that is: “soundandmossl.com” with a poker related link in the comment that goes to that domain.

I don’t know if CG-Referer logs trackbacks … does it? I can’t see that anything is listed. I’ve gone into phpmyadmin to try and match stuff and still can’t.

At the time this all started (yesterday evening April 13th) “sml338.org” was showing up in the referrer logs since mid-morning with “comments-post.php” loaded, but HASHCASH probably defeted that then. So when I discovered all that I also found that there was a new cg-power-pack out and I upgraded, but had to add “sml338” to cg-blacklist.php then it started to log that referrer as [403]. I had 9 hits from that referrer all day on the 13th before that point, since adding it to cg-blacklist.php I’ve had to this point: 231 hits logged as “[403] sml338.org”.

Trackback Spam started after I upgraded to the most recent cg-power-pack last night, and put “sml338” into cg-blacklist.php

Weird combinations of things, so I can’t tell if it’s because I put that domain into cg-blacklist.php or upgraded cg-power-pack or both, or just coincidence.

I keep getting new trackback spam every such and such minutes. I see it since I have the “PagedCommentEditing” plugin by “coldforged” installed.

Most all of it gets tagged as spam, but some is put into moderation.

Just wanted to log my experience here to record my problem with it. I’m going to put my previous version of cg-power-pack back on my site to see what happens, then delete all those files and put the new one back. Experiment to see what happens, then I’ll report that back here to see if it’s a mess up from upgrading or the new version or none of them. ??

I have “pngbehavior.htc” on my site to display transparency PNG’s in IE properly by forcing it to filter them … I found it somewhere on the web … anyhow, it worked great for me in WP 1.2, I made my own smilies as PNG’s and it was fine. I have some other PNG graphics I have on my sidebar as well.

Since upgrading to WP 1.5 the PNG graphics in IE looking at posts, i.e. smilies, aren’t loading, but the PNG’s in the sidebar work just fine in IE using pngbehavior.htc

What happens is that with pngbehavior.htc, in CSS the img tag has that file called up.

When IE loads a page with images, any png’s will first load ugly as they do in IE if they are transparents, then they will reload nicely. pngbehavior.htc invokes the alpha filter and replaces the browser graphic reference with blank.gif, but then the browser displays the PNG graphic properly.

It works still in the sidebar PNG graphics fine, but inside posts, it doesn’t work right. The graphic loads ugly and then reloads “nothing at all” it’s coded in the page right, there is the img reference there, but something isn’t working right. Something in some WP code is conflicting with it is all I can guess.

The smilies all show up in FF. So do my sidebar PNG’s. In IE 6 the smilies don’t show up in the end. Sidebar PNG’s do show up right.

I’ve tried to add css classes in my CSS file. That doesn’t change a thing. The fact that the ugly IE version of PNG loads first and then reloads nothing shows that pngbehavior.htc is being used in any case … but it’s just not working right in posts, but is in the sidebar. Most frustrating.

I have a couple of animated smiles and they are gifs. So only those few gif smilies are working in IE.

This is bothersome since my tone of writing does depend on the smilies appearing more oft than not. I have no desire to convert my smilies to GIFS.

Does anyone else use pngbehaviour.htc … or know how it works and why it’s not working in posts and comments in WP 1.5 … but used to work before just fine as far as I can remember, and does work fine in the sidebar and did before too, just won’t work right in the posts, and I really think it used to.

This is the link to the document about “pngbehavior”

https://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/pngbehavior.html