2008 Aug 14

Adding captcha to comments in Movable type 4

recaptcha.gifWhen i disabled the anonymous comment on my blog, people also stopped placing their comments. It might be because the people who commented were actually bots? Maybe or maybe not. Now, i got freaked because people really stopped commenting, as in zero comments. So, i started to look for ways to make post some comments again. I tried installing some plugin that allow users from other blogs like WordPress or other sites to use their login to comment on my blog using the OpenID technology.

Here's the list of plugin that i have installed in addition to the builtin options:
AOL/AIM
Yahoo
WordPress

But still, only a few commented. Now, I'm trying to enable reCaptcha hopefully people might come back and start to comment. If you are using MT4.1, you might need this. Otherwise, if you are using an older version then visit josh carter's blog for a workaround.

Enable reCaptcha on your Movable Type 4.1 blog
  1. Get a public and a private key from the reCaptcha website
  2. Get copy of the reCaptcha plugin from your mt4 installation folder. Its located at /extras/examples/plugins/reCaptcha from your mt4 folder
  3. Paste them to the plugins folder at /plugins/reCaptcha inside your mt4 folder
  4. There is a README file read it for instructions. 
  5. On your blog go to Preferences > Plugins
  6. Click on the the reCaptcha and enter your Public and Private keys you had when you registered at their website
  7. Click on Save Changes
  8. Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Comment 
  9. Scroll dow below to the Comment Display Options
  10. Change the Captcha Provider from None to reCaptcha
  11. Save Settings
  12. Go to your blog Preferences > Blog Settings > Spam
  13. Check if the spam slider is at zero. If its not return it to zero, otherwise you will have to moderate all the comments again.
  14. Go to Design > Templates
  15. Click on Template Modules
  16. From the README file: Edit Comment Form template, so it renders MTCaptchaFields unconditionally.  In practice, this means replacing these lines
        <MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTCaptchaFields">
        <MTIfCommentsAccepted><MTIfRegistrationAllowed><MTElse><$MTCaptchaFields$></MTIfRegistrationAllowed></MTIfCommentsAccepted>
        <div id="comments-open-captcha">
        </div>
        </MTIfNonEmpty>
    to these lines:
        <MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTCaptchaFields">
        <div id="comments-open-captcha">
        <$MTCaptchaFields$>
        </div>
        </MTIfNonEmpty>
  17. Click on Index Templates
  18. From the README file, Edit Javascipt index template, to remove these lines of code which calls delayShowCaptcha:
        <MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTCaptchaFields">
        captcha_timer = setInterval('delayShowCaptcha()', 1000);
        </MTIfNonEmpty>
  19. Save and Rebuild you blog.
Thats it you have enabled reCaptcha on your blog.

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2 Comments

On my wordpress blogs, I use a plugin called Spam Karma, which catches suspicious comments and holds them for me to approve.

So far, it is 100% for letting good stuff go, and crap quarantined.

You might want to check if MT has something similar...

@David The reason i enabled captcha on my blog is that i used to moderate them. so yes MT has that capability and its not a plugin, its builtin to MT. It also has this slider that automatically blocks suspicious comments having more than 2 links. The problem is if the spam you are to moderate increases to more than 20 a day and of course, you wouldn't want to moderate that number of spam everyday.

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This page contains a single entry by tildemark published on August 14, 2008 4:33 PM.

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