Delete Pending Comments
This plugin is a quick way to delete all pending and spam comments. It’s useful for victims of spammer attacks. After installing the plugin go to Comments -> Delete Pending Comments and follow the instructions to delete all the pending comments. Credits This plugin was originally developed by Nicolas Kuttler and he maintained it till June 24, 2020. From June 24, 2020, Sudar Muthu took over the development and maintenance of the plugin.
Disable Trackbacks
When it comes to spam and pingbacks/trackbacks, the vast majority by far is via trackbacks rather than pingbacks. Very, very few people use trackbacks for legitimate uses anymore (I’ve gotten less than 5 in the last 8 months) as WordPress, etc. all use pingbacks now as their primary ping method. I had already installed Cookies For Comments which successfully stops most spam comments but I still had to deal with the tons of trackback spam. So, I wrote this plugin. It will disable new trackbacks across your site, both legitimate and spam. However since very few people use trackbacks legitimately, this combined with Cookies For Comments should cut your spam down to next to zero. Why should I use this plugin over one of those trackback validator plugins? Most non-Akismet style anti-trackback spam plugins work by connecting to the URL that sent the trackback and looking for a link to your blog. The problem with this is that many spammers actually post links to your blog in their spam posts rendering those types of plugins useless. Even those that check the IP address to make sure it matches are beaten by spam blogs (aka splogs). In the end it’s up to you what to use for anti-spam, but I personally use Cookies For Comments, this plugin, and then Akismet to catch anything that makes it through.
