Defensio Died, Akismet’s Back and Other Fun
Posted by Kirk M on 10 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: JT Evening News
It’s about time for another update on the happenings around here. So without further ado…
Defensio, the other anti-spam service and competitor to Akismet, apparently corrupted it’s own database table today which effectively rendered my admin useless and just about locked up my site while it was at it. I got my first clue this morning when I found 42 comments in moderation and a warning in the admin (once I finally managed to get in) that Defensio could not process, you guessed it, those same 42 comments. And hitting the “Process Now” button did nothing. Hitting the “Process Now” button hasn’t ever done anything since I installed the plugin but since everything else worked fine I didn’t worry too much about it. I actually kind of liked the way Defensio was laid out, color coded comments according to how bad they reeked of “spamminess”, hiding the worst offenders so you only had to pick over the moderate stuff and the plugin was pretty accurate after the “training period” was over, at least on par with Aksimet’s accuracy. Too bad. As soon as I managed to deactivate Defensio, everything went back to normal.
Whether the service went down or the table was corrupted, my host screwing up or all three combined, crippling my site as a result isn’t kosher especially since I had no idea how long it had been that way. I saved all the SQL errors that stated that Defensio couldn’t create this and couldn’t update that etc and I’ll send this along to the developers to see what they have to say. I’d also like to know, since Defensio works off of external servers just like Aksimet, why it needs to create a database table in the first place. I may have missed something here.
But wait, there’s more…
In the name of security and efficiency I finally decided to lose two of my longtime plugins. The first of these provided those roving bands of blog muggers valuable info that they might use to hack there way into my beloved WordPress install and that was the plugin that powered my “Plugins I Use” page. You can always learn something new now and then and putting out a list of your activated plugins might let a hacker know that your running an out of date or badly coded plugin that just might provide an easy way into your files and so that plugin was shown the door. Since the plugin constituted what is considered a security risk, the fact that it has not been updated in over a year and is not listed in the WordPress Plugins Directory…I’ll just leave it at that.
The second one was the Community Cloud plugin. Grandad had a problem with this plugin wherein his site became all choked up due to the number of queries to his database this plugin was causing. There’s actually nothing wrong with the Communty Cloud plugin, it’s more because Grandad has a plethora of comments coming in everyday and the poor plugin was having to keep up a constant dialog with the SQL database so it could properly update the “cloud”. Now I can’t hold a candle to the number of comments I get a day to Grandad’s mob but since the Community Cloud page never seemed to be hit at all plus the fact I Do-Follow anyway, why take the chance I might eventually become as popular as Grandad someday?
Just a little joke there.
Besides, I’d rather have my site as speedy and efficient as it can be for any readers that may stop by.
Note: There’s nothing wrong with the Community Cloud plugin. For your average site with an average amount of comments there shouldn’t be a problem at all. It was solely my personal choice to stop using it.
Last but not least I finally got around to locking down my WordPress install mostly according to Matt Cutts 3 steps but modified a bit between what my host’s cPanel offers for extra security and what a couple of his commenter’s suggested so that’s done at last. I feel so much better about myself now.
Now usually I format this type of “in case you interested” post as yet another edition of the “JT Evening News” (published whenever I feel like it)……but I didn’t. At least I put it in the correct category though. 
Possibly Related Matter
10 Comments »
on 10 Feb 2008 at 10:00 pm 1.Carl Mercier said …
Hello!
First of all, I’m terribly sorry about the comments hitting the moderation queue this morning. We posted details about the issue we faced to our forum (http://forum.defensio.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=45). It was quickly resolved and you should be able to use the “process now” button at this moment.
However, it’s very strange that your Wordpress database got corrupted. It’s certainly not because of Defensio as we don’t have control over this. Actually, I don’t think it’s related to this morning’s issue at all and probably just a coincidence. I’d sure love to see the details about it.
As for your question about the Defensio table in your database, it’s used to store spaminess values and unique signatures for each comment. Nothing very funky about it as you can see.
Hope you’ll be back on Defensio soon! Cheers!
on 10 Feb 2008 at 10:05 pm 2.janeywan said …
Kirk,
You may not get as many comments as Grandad, but I bet you have as many readers. I find your site very informative and just plain hard, for a pea brain like me, to comment on at times, rest assured I’m always reading.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 12:47 pm 3.KirkM said …
Hi Janet,
Well thank you my friend, that’s very much appreciated! And I’m sure your not “pea brained” at all. It’s more along the lines that my writing is a bear to understand. Most of the time I don’t understand my own writing myself.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 12:57 pm 4.KirkM said …
Hi Carl,
I’m not 100% sure that Defensio was directly responsible for the SQL problem either but doing a check and repair on my database tables (just to say I did) did not resolve the problem so the whole situation is rather weird to say the least. All I know for sure is that as soon as I deactivated Defensio the site immediately returned to normal and has been working correctly ever since with no additional errors. Of course I had to enable Akismet shortly thereafter due to my usual amount of incoming “spamments”
I’m always game to give it another try so I’ll shoot you an email and attach the 3 error logs that came up with the same errors regarding Defensio so make sure you check your spam folder in case it gets flagged due to the attachments.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 1:54 pm 5.Elaine said …
Do I need to get rid of the community cloud plug-in as well??
on 11 Feb 2008 at 2:04 pm 6.KirkM said …
Not at all Elaine. Unless your site experiences a major slow down (your site is rather peppy in my experience) there’s no need to worry about it. If you do experience a consistent slow down, just deactivate the Community Cloud plugin to see if things speed up again. The biggest reason that I deactivated it was that the page never seemed to be visited according to my stats so why have something that serves no purpose? That kind of thing.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 5:12 pm 7.Elaine said …
Actually mine rarely gets clicked on either according to my blog stats. I have given it some thought about it’s usefulness. I’m kinda like you….’if it serves no purpose then why have it?’
on 11 Feb 2008 at 6:04 pm 8.KirkM said …
Hi Elaine,
That’s usually the best way to go.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 9:10 pm 9.Rick Cockrum said …
Have you ever tried Spam Karma, Kirk? It’s done a pretty good job in the time I’ve used it.
on 12 Feb 2008 at 1:23 pm 10.KirkM said …
HI Rick,
Thanks for the suggestion and yes I have actually used it before but I finally gave up on it after nearly a year of no further development and the last known compatibility was WP 2.2 and we’re headed for 2.5. That plus the fact that it had a bad habit of grinding the backend to a near halt after it had been installed for a decent amount of time (too many queries to the DB and too high CPU usage they say) and it’s rotten tendency to block one or two of my regular commenters for no reason. It even blocked Liz Strauss a few times. Go figure.
I believe I just might give Bad behavior another try since 3 new versions have come out since I threw it out of my admin for blocking too many legit queries and it’s problem with corrupting DB’s. Who knows, the problems just might be fixed.