Real Comment Throttle
Real Comment Throttle is a plugin for Movable Type 3.1 and 3.2 which puts a stop to new comments when you’ve gotten more than the number you feel you can handle, per day or per hour, whether to save your sanity from getting too many comment notification emails or to save your server from too many simultaneous rebuilds.
Version 0.1, which only works on MT 3.1, works in just one way: when the throttle is triggered comments are refused, with the same message that the built in throttle gives when someone makes a second comment too quickly, saying “I’ve enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again” (though the short amount of time may be an hour, or until you delete the flood of comments).
Version 0.2, which only works on MT 3.2, gives you the choice between refusing comments after the throttle is triggered, or sending them to the Junk Folder, which gives the same message as a moderated comment about “I have enabled a feature that allows your comments to be held for approval the first time you post a comment” (even if it’s not their first time), but doesn’t require them to wait around retrying their comment, and doesn’t send you an email for each comment like actual moderation does.
Version 0.1 has a single pair of settings, for comments per hour and comments per day, which apply to all weblogs on the system: if you set it to 75 per hour (the default) then each weblog can get a maximum of 75 comments per hour. Version 0.2 has settings for each weblog, so that less commented-on weblogs can have a lower throttle than busier ones, but you need to adjust the settings by going to the individual weblog’s Settings – Plugins page; the settings from System Overview – Plugins are ignored.
For Version 0.1, and Version 0.2 with the default “refuse them” behavior, when the throttle is triggered it will put a message in the activity log for each refused comment (note that in MT 3.2, it will be in the system-wide log, not in the log for the individual weblog, due to a technical limitation); for Version 0.2 with the “junk them” behavior you will see comments in the Junk Folder with the message “Throttled comment: too many this (hour or day).”
Since I’m no longer using Movable Type, this will be my last release. The parts of the code which are my original work are in the public domain, the parts which are copied from MT core code and Six Apart sample plugins have the same ambiguous license status that I “borrowed” them under. If you want to take it over, let me know when you have a release, and I’ll be happy to redirect people to yours.
Download:
Installation: unzip the download, and put the included file(s) in the same directories on your server as the ones they’re in in the zip. If you are upgrading from Version 0.1 to Version 0.2, remove the 0.1 files (realcommentthrottle.tmpl in tmpl/cms/, realcommentthrottle.pm in extlib/philringnalda/, realcommentthrottle.pl in plugins/, and realcommentthrottle.cgi in your main mt directory).
Related weblog entries: