MovableType Trackback Spam

In the last couple of days, a new deluge of trackback spams has flooded my site. Whilst the MovableType MT-Blacklist plug-in allows me to filter them out, I'm still getting an alert email for each spam, which is almost as bad as the spam itself. Since in any case the actual value of trackbacks is very limited, outside of the self-congratulary Californian blogging community, and I've never received a single one, I decided to disable them globally. It is perhaps indicative of the above community's mentality, which MovavbleType is such a part of, that the interface has no global switch to disable trackbacks - how could one ever want to completely turn off this "oooh, look, someone's talking about clever me" feature. Even Jay Allen's "Hacking Movable Type", which contains all sorts of esoteric (and often largely pointless) stuff, doesn't give a hint. However, a quick look at the MT database reveals what seems to be a SQL solution (globally for an installation - all blogs. For individual blogs, you have to add a blog_id WHERE clause): UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_pings = 0 WHERE entry_allow_pings = 1; Then, probably, rebuild each blog. And you're done.

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