[wp-hackers] Cannot stop comments from being posted

[Patty Ayers]

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:32 AM, Mike Little <wordpress at zed1.com> wrote:

> On 9 May 2013 15:12, Patty Ayers <patty at ayersvirtual.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Dwain Maralack <dwain.maralack at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > There is actually a plugin that does this all for you:
> > >
> > > http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-comments/
> > >
> >
> > Thank you, Dwain. It's looking like the problem is the theme. Some useful
> > information on that plugin's page:
> >
> > "Unfortunately some themes do not properly check the comment status of
> > posts..."
> >
> > "Nothing happens after I disable comments on all posts - comment forms
> > still appear when I view my posts. This is because your theme is not
> > checking the comment status of posts in the correct way..."
> >
> >
> Whether a comment form appears or not is related to the theme, but if
> comments are disabled on a post, even though the theme may show the comment
> form, WordPress should not accept the comment submission.
>
> In fact, the comment spamming scripts, don't even go through your theme's
> form, they submit directly to WordPress' comment handler.
>
> You should be able to tell whether your theme is doing the right thing. If
> you look at a page/post with comments disabled, does your theme show a
> comment form? If not, there is nothing wrong with your theme.
>

Ah, ok. The comment form does *not* appear.

And that makes sense with what I'm finding after pursuing what you
explained in your post just previous to this one: pingbacks and trackbacks
*were* enabled on a number of posts/pages.

It now looks like THAT was the problem, and not the theme. I'm going
through every post/page individually, unchecking "Allow pingbacks".

I also filtered the list of comments as you suggested, and most of them
were indeed pingbacks.

Thank you VERY much. It sounds like this was the problem.

Patty