Six Apart has offered Typekey authentication in Movable Type since version 3.0 and it's is a great way to stop comment spam. However what if you don't want to (or can't) use it?
Comment Email Filter, a new plugin for Movable Type, allows you to trust or ban commenters based on their email addresses using an incredibly simple interface. You can go one step further with Comment Email Filter and only allow comments to be published if a trusted email address has been entered (a great way to nip unwanted comments in the bud!). The beauty of Comment Email Filter is that it lives on your server, you don't have to rely (or trust) a third party and best of all, you manage it!
All this is available through an easy to use interface with MT Enterprise users are being provided with a more verbose interface for listing, trusting and banning email addresses.
Comment Email Filter is free for personal users, however, a donation of $ is greatly appreciated. Commercial users are encouraged to support this plugin by donating at least $
You must have:
To download Comment Email Filter, select the download format you would like, .zip files are good for Windows servers while .tar.gz files are good for Unix/Mac servers.
Installation is quite simple.
Extract the distribution and preserve the directories. The directories that have been extracted correspond to the directories in your Movable Type installation. Upload these directories to your Movable Type installation such that file structure looks like so:
MT_DIR/
|__ plugins/
\__ CommentEmailFilter/
|__ CommentEmailFilter.pl
|__ tmpl/
|__ config.tmpl
|__ list_emails.tmpl
If the plugin was successfully installed, you should see something similar to this on the Plugins listing under System Overview.
Usage is also equally simple. Email addresses can be trusted and banned at both the system (i.e. affecting all blogs on the system) and blog levels. To trust or ban email addresses at the system level, go to System Overview > Plugins and then click Show Settings for Comment Email Filter. To trust or ban email address at the blog level, go to Blog Settings > Plugins tab and then click Show Settings for Comment Email Filter.
You will be presented with a screen as shown in the screenshot below with two text fields. The first text field should contain a list of all trusted email address - one email address per line. The second text field should contain a list of banned email addresses - one email address per line.
Comment Email Filter uses the feedback rating system introduced in Movable Type 3.2. Each trusted email address is given a score of +10 while each banned email address is given a score of -10. These scores ensure that comments with trusted email addresses are always approved and published while comments with banned email addresses are always junked. However, each email address can be given its own score. If you add a number to the end of a line, it will be interpreted as a score as demonstrated in the screenshot above.
Scores entered into the first text field will always be interpreted as positive scores whilst scores entered into the second text field will always be interpreted as negative scores.
Email addresses can also be trusted or banned via the comment listing and edit comment pages using the pull down menus which will contain two new options, Trust Email Address(es) and Ban Email Address(es). This is highlighted in the two screenshots below.
On the comment listing screen, select all the comments with email addresses you would like to trust or ban and then choose the appropriate action from the pull down menu (at the top or bottom of the screen).
On the comment editing screen, you can trust or ban the email address by selecting the appropriate action from the pull down menu at the bottom of the screen.
Either method will trust or ban the email address on the blog level only and the email address will be given the default score (+10 for trusted and -10 for banned email addresses).
If you use MT Enterprise, Comment Email Filter will add an Email Filter tab to the Authenticated Commenters screen:
Clicking this tab takes you to a screen exclusively for MT Enterprise users. Here you have a more easier to use and intuitive interface for listing email addresses as well as trusting or banning them. The status, number of comments and date of last comment is shown for each email address in the table. Clicking the comment count will take you to a listing of all comments posted with the email address.
By default both trusted and banned email addresses are shown. However this can be changed by using the filter settings. Click None on the filter bar (underneath the tabs) to reveal the filtering options - currently you can filter email addresses based on their trusted/banned status.
To trust or ban an email address, click the Add New Email link and fill in the form that appears.
Email addresses entered here will be trusted or banned at the blog level only.
Comment Email Filter provides the following tags that can be used within your templates:
<MTIfCommentEmailIsTrusted> — This conditional tag can be used within an MTComments container and evaluates as true if the current comment uses a trusted email addressComment Email Filter is only compatible with Movable Type 3.31 onwards or Movable Type Enterprise 1.02 onwards. If you use an older version of Movable Type, try one of the previous versions listed below:
Q: How do I only accept comments from trusted commenters?
A: To only allow trusted commenters to publish comments:
Blog SettingsBasic Settings, click the General tab and under Comments, select Allow comments from Anyone.Detailed Settings, click the Feedback tab and under Comments, select Allow comments from Anyone.Go to Comment Email Filter's settings (either on the blog level or the system level), enter the email addresses for everyone you want to comment and then check the Junk comments with non-trusted email addresses.
Click Save Changes
Now only comments with a trusted email address will be published. The rest will be junked!
Comment Email Filter is free for personal users, however, a donation of $ is greatly appreciated. Commercial users are encouraged to support this plugin by donating at least $
For support, visit the forums
Comment Email Filter is free for personal users, however, a donation of at least $ is greatly appreciated.
If you have a problem installing or using Comment Email Filter, visit our forums
You can download, install and try a fully functional version of Comment Email Filter for a 30-day evaluation period. If, after this period, you wish to continue using the plugin, you are expected to purchase a commercial license for $. Purchasing a commerial license entitles you to priority support via The Helpdesk.
You can download, install and try a fully functional version of Comment Email Filter for a 30-day evaluation period. If, after this period, you wish to continue using the plugin, you are expected to purchase an enterprise license for $. Purchasing an enterprise license entitles you to priority support via The Helpdesk.