Stop Direct Spam Comments in Wordpress

I recently redesigned my wordpress theme for iOS Icon Gallery and Mac Icon Gallery.

The old themes provided the ability to comment through the interface. Due to a lack of real comments and a surplus in spam comments, I decided to entirely remove the ability to comment from the interface.

Removing the Ability to Comment From the Interface Is Not Enough to Keep Out Spam

Once my theme went live, I was still getting spam comments in the Wordpress backend. I asked myself, "how are comments still appearing in the Wordpress backend when I don't have a single comment form on my website?" After some Googling, I discovered this was due to spambots posting data directly using wp-comments-post.php.

Further Stopping Spambots

To prevent spambots from posting to Wordpress via a URL, you can block access to wp-comments-post.php via the .htaccess file. Simply include these rules in your .htaccess file (thanks to catswhocode)

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post.php*
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomainname.* [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
    RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Note: Be sure to change the yourdomainname part!

That Doesn't Help You?

If this doesn't seem like the best fix for you, try looking at this article from WP Tuts+ detailing easy and efficient ways to combat spam comments.