check_javascript - Rejects comments using JavaScript...

Summary

This plugin filters spam with a dash of JavaScript on the client side. The JavaScript sets a hidden input field secretToken in the comment form to the blog’s title. This plugin checks the secretToken URL parameter and rejects the comment if it’s not set correctly.

The benefit of JavaScript as an anti-spam technique is that it’s very successful. It has extremely low false positive and false negative rates, as compared to conventional techniques like CAPTCHAs, bayesian filtering, and keyword detection.

Of course, JavaScript has its own drawbacks, primarily that it’s not supported in extremely old browsers, and that users can turn it off. That’s a very small minority of cases, though. Its effectiveness as an anti-spam technique usually make that tradeoff worthwhile.

Install

Requires the comments plugin.

This plugin comes with Pyblosxom. To install, do the following:

1. Add Pyblosxom.plugins.check_javascript to the load_plugins list in your config.py file.
2. Configure as documented below.

Configure

1. Make sure you have blog_title set in your config.py.

2. Add the following bits to your comment-form template inside the <form> tags:

   <input type="hidden" name="secretToken" id="secretTokenInput"
     value="pleaseDontSpam" />
   
   <script type="text/javascript">
   // used by check_javascript.py. this is almost entirely backwards
   // compatible, back to 4.x browsers.
   document.getElementById("secretTokenInput").value = "$(blog_title)";
   </script>
   

License

Plugin is distributed under license: GPLv2