{"id":240,"date":"2009-03-24T17:42:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T17:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bishnet.net\/tim\/blog\/?p=240"},"modified":"2010-11-11T13:01:23","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T13:01:23","slug":"broken-pingbacks-whats-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bishnet.net\/tim\/blog\/2009\/03\/24\/broken-pingbacks-whats-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken pingbacks – what’s to blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a while I’ve been noticing a lack of pingbacks from people linking to me. At first I put it down to people just not linking to me, but then after discussions with a colleague today I realised I didn’t have that annoying problem of them happening when I link to my own posts. I tested further and realised they weren’t working at all.<\/p>\n

I debugged the issue using the good old “print debug messages all over the place” method – crude but effective. I started in xmlrpc.php and discovered that it was stopping at this line:<\/p>\n

$comment_ID = wp_new_comment($commentdata);<\/code><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This meant it was getting as far as trying to post the comment. It was then that I had a lightbulb moment. What would be stopping comments being posted? My captcha to stop comment spam<\/a> (has it really been three years since I set that up?), that’s what!<\/p>\n

My colleague has been using a numerical captcha-style plugin called Math Comment Spam Protection<\/a> (MCSP) instead. I did a quick comparison between it and the SecureImage plugin and fairly quickly found the difference. This is from the MCSP plugin:<\/p>\n

if (\u00c2\u00a0 ( !isset($user_ID) ) && ( $comment_data['comment_type'] == '' ) ) {<\/code><\/p>\n

\/\/ Do not check if the user is registered & do not check trackbacks\/pingbacks<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By comparison, the SecureImage plugin only checked if the user is registered:<\/p>\n

\/\/ If the user is not logged in check the security code<\/code><\/p>\n

if ( !$user_ID ) {<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The fix looks simple. But, given the lack of updates for SecureImage I decided it was time to move on. So now I have the MCSP plugin instead, and pingbacks are once again working.<\/p>\n

I just have one request to make. Can anyone who’s linked to me in the last three years please try again? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For up to three years pingbacks on my blog have been broken. After finally noticing I track down the problem and find a fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,96,92,93,91,94,97],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","tag-captcha","tag-comment-spam","tag-math-comment-spam-protection","tag-mcsp","tag-pingback","tag-secureimage","tag-spam"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t