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How to Ban Spammers by IP Address in WordPress

I don’t even get all that much spam (Bad Behavior seems to work pretty well), but of course it’s always annoying when I do. One thing I never understood was that WordPress would only let you ban by IP address if you added that IP to the comments blacklist. Why isn’t there an option when moderating comments to simply ban a user? That’s my big feature request going out to the WordPressians.

A quick search found me Bannage, a WordPress plugin that lets you ban spammers by IP, email, domain, and name. It’s more convenient than using the comments blacklist. It’s certainly more convenient than futzing with .htaccess. I’m nerdy, but I’m not that nerdy. I’m more of a business/art nerd than a programming nerd. Amyway, there’s one thing you should know about Bannage: the admin controls are under the Plugin section, not Manage or Options like most plugins.

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2 Responses to How to Ban Spammers by IP Address in WordPress
  1. Justin
    August 30, 2006 | 9:12 am

    Hey, appreciate the feedback on Bannage. Initially the WP-Plugin was started because Akismet just was not catching absolutely everything, seemed to be a point when Akismet stop handling the spam all together. However, most comment spam seems to come from the same networks and such. I’ve been developing a ‘directory’ of spam ips and uri(s) that I hopefully will end up (a) distributing amongst bannage users or (b) create a plugin similar to akismet that keeps the list updated throughout the community of users and additions are created via rules.

    Well, either way — thanks for the support mate!

  2. Michael
    August 30, 2006 | 9:21 pm

    You’re welcome. It’s well-deserved. I look forward to those ideas you’ve mentioned. Keep up the good work, mate!

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