Sometimes people like to comment here, but recently my father has said he frequently gets notices that he didn’t pass my spam filter, and thus couldn’t post his comments. I once logged out and attempted to comment and go the same error message – so I assumed that there was a plugin acting crazy and not allowing people to comment (I had noticed that no one had commented on my blog in quite some time even if they had commented before).
I disabled a plugin that forced people to answer a simple question to prove they were humans and suddenly I began to get comments. A lot of comments. Unfortunately, they were all from spammers. *sigh* Every day I’d log in and would find a dozen or so new spam comments that easily made it past my spam filter by Akismet, yet couldn’t make it past my “prove you’re a human” captcha plugin previously in use.
So aggravating.
Now I’m wondering what my next steps are. If Akismet is not working well, I need to figure out another way to battle spam that will still allow real people to be able to post comments when they are so inclined. I’ve installed another plugin that supposedly will fix the issue, so we’ll see.
If you are a live human visitor here, I’d love if you’d try commenting and let me know if you experience trouble. If you do, you can drop me an email at cootiehog at gmail dot com. Thanks!
Update:
My friend Cristan commented and received an error message, but when I logged in after she emailed me with the screenshot, her comment showed as being approved and already posted. But since the plug-in I installed last week did not work properly, I have removed it and simply gone into my general blog settings and changed a few things. We’ll see if that removes spam without real people getting error messages. Let me know!
Good luck! Sometimes I hate WordPress plugins.
The problem I found previously was that the question was above the post, so I answered it, then typed in the post. Then I got a message that the question had “expired” so I answered the new one and then got a message that it was incorrect and I was blocked. I didn’t see the intermediate solution, but am trying to post now.
I removed that particular plugin, which I found out recently had been removed from WordPress entirely and hadn’t been updated in over 2 years. But when I removed it, spam came flooding onto the site, so I installed another one – causing Cristan’s error. So I removed THAT one and just used WP’s own settings. And you got the exact same error. Looks like I’ll be contacting WP directly on this one. I’m stumped.
All right, I’ve deactivated Akismet on the off-chance that it is the culprit. Let’s see what happens when I click on “Send Message.”
Same error message. But when I hit the back arrow and go to re-submit the comment, I get a notice that my comment is a duplicate. And then when I reload this page, my comment shows up. Very strange.
Hey there!
🙂
It was recommended that I try disabling plugins one at a time to see if that fixed the commenting problems. So I’ve deactivated the most recent one to see if that resolves the problem. I don’t download plugins very often, so if it IS a plugin problem, it’s the one I just disabled.
Nope. Same problem. I know I recently activated a visitor counter plugin – I’m disabling that one in case that’s the problem. Let’s see if this comment posts in the first attempt.
Trying again with NO plugins activated.
Trying again with NO plugins activated. Same error.
Wait…it just let me post. I reactivated all my plugins, and now it’s letting me post?
I think it is fixed!