use htaccess to block trackback spam?

[Don Chambers]

I found a method for preventing trackback spam in another blogging platform, and wondered if that approach would be any better than denying trackbacks via the spam protector setting of "How to treat comments made via APIs".

Trackbacks are great, but sometimes the spam load exceeds the value. However, google and other search engines like seeing links on your site from one entry to another, so allowing local trackbacks while denying external trackbacks could be ideal for some sites, or at least, the concept sounds good to me and I would like opinions on this:

Code: Select all

<FilesMatch "comment\.php">
# need to replace ip address below with local IP
  SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "^123\.456\.789\." TB_OK=1
  Order deny,allow
  Deny from all
  Allow from env=TB_OK
</FilesMatch>

So, any better? worse? other thoughts? My thinking (which could be flawed) is that performance will not be as affected if junk can be trapped before it is processed by s9y.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

IMHO trackbacks are quite worthless when only done locally. Locally I can alreay add links to my blog entry, if I want to reference local entries, I wouldn't need trackbacks for that, which would give the user an impression that external trackbacks would be available.

Your htaccess could should surely work, though!

Regards,
Garvin