Wordpress banhammer?

November 20, 2008 10:50 AM

Anybody with a Wordpress blog have any suggestions for how to ban users?

I don't allow commenting anywhere, but I do have a bulletin board that i would like to prevent from becoming a cesspool. I have a captcha requirement for registration, which should catch most spam bots (naive?) so I'm mostly interested in being able to wield the banhammer on the occasional individual asshat. I've got the WP-Ban plugin installed, which seems straightforward enough, but I have no idea how to associate an IP with a user in order to bring down the hammer. What am I missing?

posted by stupidsexyFlanders to computers & internet (6 comments total)

What bulletin board software are you using?
posted by jack_mo at 10:58 AM on November 20, 2008

Simple:Press forum plguin
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2008

Without installing it to check, it looks like you should get a user's IP address in the notification email you receive when a user registers or makes a new post (if you have notification enabled). Otherwise, it's available in Simple:Press' "post properties" and "admin icon tools" according to this bug report, though that was only added 6 days ago, so you might well need to upgrade to the latest version.

Also, it's probably worth pointing out that banning people on the basis of their IP address isn't a great idea - you could be banning everyone who works at the same company as the banned user, or hundreds of people using an ISP that assigns IP addresses to multiple accounts. Not to mention that some ISPs give you a different IP address every time you dial-up/restart your router/etc., in which case your ban would only be temporary for your naughty user, but permanent for every person who happened to get that IP address in future. Just deleting the user's account would be a better bet (that's how banning works at MetaFilter, AFAIK).
posted by jack_mo at 11:18 AM on November 20, 2008

Deleting a user account doesn't stop that account from signing up again. I have made a new user role called Banned that has no privileges, and simply add jerks to that role.
posted by mkb at 12:21 PM on November 20, 2008

Do you find that they'll often go to the trouble of re-registering using a different email?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:46 PM on November 20, 2008

Well, mine are almost all bots, so no.
posted by mkb at 2:19 PM on November 20, 2008