TOPIC: Akismet not blocking messages

I am using joomlacomment 4.0b2. I have set "Use akismet spam protection" to Yes, and have entered my akismet key. I then post a comment with the subject and text of "akismet-test-123", and also one of "'viagra-test-123". Neither comments were blocked. Both these strings should cause the message to automatically be blocked by akismet. Did I miss a setting, or is there a bug?

Thanks

Martin

Hey Martin,
I've just tested this on my localhost and it is working with beta2. I found this article searching in google:
globalmoxie.com/help/faq/config/akismet.shtml

“It’s not working!”

If the message does not appear in the “Review Comment Spam” screen, this indicates a problem with your setup. A few things to check:

1.

Make sure that you have entered the correct 12-digit comment key in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen (available to administrator accounts only).
2.

Is your server part of a private network that requires a proxy server to access the Internet? If so, be sure to enter the URL of the proxy server in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen. If you’re not sure whether your network uses a proxy server, check with your network administrator.
3.

Ask your hosting company or network administrator if your server is allowed to make outgoing HTTP (web) requests. Some hosts block outgoing connections, which means that Big Medium cannot contact the Akismet server.
4.

Check the Big Medium server log for error messages. Big Medium writes an error entry in its log file when it runs into a problem communicating with the Akismet server. Submit a comment, and then check the log for error messages. It’s located here:
moxiedata/logs/bm_syslog.txt
5.

Review the Akismet FAQ.

Thanks for the prompt response. I did some digging through the code to see why it's not working. Basically it is working, just not as I expected. You have the following code;

if($akismet->isCommentSpam())
{
// store the comment but mark it as spam (in case of a mis-diagnosis)
$published = 0;
}

but I was previewing comments anyway, and expected them all to be deleted if Akismet marked them as spam, e.g.

if($akismet->isCommentSpam())
{
if($this->_autopublish){
// store the comment but mark it as spam (in case of a mis-diagnosis)
$published = 0;
} else {
// we are already reviewing all messages, so with Akismet turned on, just block it
die('Sorry, this message has been blocked');
}
}

Anyway, up to you, but this might make life easier for people who want to be strict on spam.

Martin

Sorry, I didn't understand. What do you want? Forbid publishing of the message if akismet mark it as spam?

You got me thinking - my comments are based on minor alterations from what is there today, as opposed to thinking about it afresh.

The behaviour I ideally want is as follows (I appreciate this is not a trivial amount of work from what is there today - this is a wish list)

1) Whenever a comment is made that is not spam, post it immediately and send me an e-mail to let me know
2) Whenever a comment is made that is suspected of being spam, put it in a separate spam folder that can be reviewed at leisure. Don't send me a notification
3) Clean out the spam folder every 30 days
4) Allow for different captchas to be used to help avoid bots.

Martin

I like idea 2 and 3. About 4 Ajay Lulia was working on implementing recaptcha for joomlacomment 4.0, but his computer got screwed and he lost his work.

Would you like some help adding recaptcha? I do have quite a lot of php experience and wouldn't mind coding it if you let me know what you want.

Martin

Hey Martin!
I don't have time to work on this, but it would be really great if you can implement it.

What we need is to add recaptcha functionality recaptcha.net/ .
How should it work. In the backend you have the possibility to choose to use the normal captcha or not. I think this field should be left there, but a new drop down field should come there. With 2 option - standard and recaptcha. If recaptcha is choosed, then the script of recaptcha should work in the frontend.

If you really want to work on this, then you can take beta2 as it is and implement it. I'm refactoring a big chunk of code from beta2, cause there are some things that are not working as they should. When I'm ready I will take your code and add to the necessary places.

What do you think?

Sure, I can do that. Do you have a code repository I should put it in, or just e-mail you the files?

Martin

Just upload the final result as a zip file

Here you go;
joomlacomment4.zip

files changed are;

joscomment/jscripts/client.js
joscomment/security.php
joscomment/comment.class.php
joscomment/templates/*/index.html
admin_languages/*
class.config.comment.php

the php code generates the right html for the recaptcha, and the preferences are stored correctly and so on. There is one problem with it though - the javascript that comes from recaptcha seems to clash very badly with the ajax libraries that you are using - not sure if there naming conflicts or something like that. The code works fine in firefox, but in chrome it sometimes just causes the captcha content to display when you click "Add New", and in IE8 it actually somehow crashes the browser.

I don't understand enough about your ajax libraries to resolve that issue, but hopefully you or someone else on your team does and can fix this last hurdle.

Thanks

Martin

LOL man! You are extremely fast! I was expecting to hear from you next year!

HOLY CRAP.

*Bows before Martin*

Thanks. I've done some more digging, and narrowed the issue down to one of the templates (which happens to be the default one of course);

JQdefault-emotop: bombs out when you hide/show the comment region
MT-DoubleSide: works OK, but the style renders the captcha too far left
MTdefault-emotop: works perfectly
SSlide-emotop: works perfectly
SSlideBoth-emotop: works perfectly
akostyle: doesn't appear to support captcha's at all
modern: works fine

so, by copying the script in index.html that contains JOSC_afterAjaxResponse from MTdefault-emotop to JQdefault-emotop, I was able to get that working too. I have attached an updated version with all of that in.

By the way, I don't see any "Reply" link any more. Did I break that, or is that a known issue with Beta 2?

Martin joomlacomment4-20090903.zip

Heya Martin,

Not sure if you're still around, sorry for the late reply. Daniel recently trunked the code overhaul he was talking about earlier in this thread, and we are continuing to work towards the next release - RC1.

In regards to that Reply button not working, I have no idea i'm afraid! However, I think it's nearly time we work on implementing this into JoomlaComment to hopefully bring it into RC1.

Daniel and I will have to talk more on this, but thanks again so much for your contributions!

Yea, I'm still around. Glad you guys are getting closer to RC1.

If you need any help merging the code in, just let me know.

Thanks

Martin

I've managed to get it in to the latest build very quickly thanks to your code Martin, but the ReCaptcha code mistakenly succeeds/approves when the user only types the first word without the second. I can't nail where it's happening, I'm sure it's just a one-liner of string manipulation needed. I think i'll check out another Wordpress/Joomla plugin that uses ReCaptcha.

Oh... I was reading a 'Bug Report' on Google Code of an identical case of wrong approval, but ReCaptcha designers responded with "this is by design".

Official reCAPTCHA FAQ wrote: reCAPTCHA consists of two words a verification word, which the reCAPTCHA server knows the answer to and a read word which comes from an old book. The read word is not graded (since the server is using human guesses to figure out the answer). As such, this word can be entered incorrectly, and the CAPTCHA will still be valid. Each read word is sent to multiple people, so incorrect solutions will not affect the output of reCAPTCHA.

On the verification word, reCAPTCHA intentionally allows an "off by one" error depending on how much we trust the user giving the solution. This increases the user experience without impacting security. reCAPTCHA engineers monitor this functionality for abuse.

Well, at least now everyone can have reCAPTCHA support in the next release thanks again Martin, especially for doing the back-end parameters

JonusC wrote:

Well, at least now everyone can have reCAPTCHA support in the next release thanks again Martin, especially for doing the back-end parameters

You're welcome. Looking forward to the next release!

Martin

Woohoo - ReCaptcha in RC1!

Thanks for helping out on this Martin.

When is RC1 due out? I'll write an announcement post on whyjoomla.com when it is...

q./