How To Hide Trackback

Posted on September 23, 2007
Filed Under WordPress Customization, WordPress Spam |

In my previous post “How to Turn Off Trackback“I mentioned that a simple way to stop automatic trackback spam is to remove wp-trackback.php from WP installation’s root directory.

Automatic trackback spam bots make all efforts on wp-trackback.php file. The bots know the file name and know where to find it. So why not hide trackback? If you rename this file, the trackback spam bots will no long find it, and therefore lose all the power.

Because you still want the trackback/pingback functionality in your site, you need to keep the renamed file work with other WP files. Wherever this file is referred, you also need to change the file name so that the link is not broken. Luckily there are only 2 files referring wp-trackback.php, both are both in the wp-includes directory:

comment-template.php (2 instances)
template-loader.php (3 instances)

If you edit these two files to match the new name, you keep trackback/pingback working, but all trackback spams are gone.

Comments

2 Responses to “How To Hide Trackback”

  1. davez on October 28th, 2007 12:56 am

    this is a comment test.

  2. Charl on December 23rd, 2007 12:51 pm

    Thanks for the usefull info

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