Lets face it, the bloggosphere has a bunch of awesome people in it, but with awesome comes the dregs of society… You know the sort, those who like to get a bit of dutch courage in them on a Saturday night and then leave troll-y comments. Not enough dutch courage to leave a real name mind you – but enough to be a dick.
I’m generally okay with trolls, I’ve generally got a good idea about who might be behind it, but for those with less thick skin, it can be pretty upsetting and really ruin your day.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to knock up this super easy guide on how to ban idiots from your blog – I *might* have accidentally left the IP addresses of those naughty people uncovered. Don’t DoS them – whatever you do!
Anyway – thankfully it’s VERY easy to ban someone from your blog if you’re using WordPress, there are a range of plugins out there that do the job. I like this one, and this guide will use it. I imagine the principal is the same in other plugins.
1. Install the plugin on your blog.
From the WordPress sidebar
Plugins > Add New
Then search for ‘WP-Ban’ and hit ‘Install’
Activate WP-Ban and you’re ready to rock and roll.
2. Find the IP address of the person you want to ban.
Thankfully, WordPress logs the IP Address of anyone who leaves a comment. The IP address is the unique ID of the router that serves up the internet connection – it’s four numbers separated by four full stops. So find the IP address of the idiot in question from the ‘Comments’ section.
So, note down the IP address of the idiot.
3. In the WordPress Dashboard go to Settings > Ban
Find the ‘Banned IP’s’ box, and put in the IP address of each idiot on a new line – Like so..
Scroll down to the bottom and hit ‘Save Changes’ and BOOM said idiots IP addresses are banned from your blog.
You can change the message displayed to them when they try to visit in the ‘Banned Message’ box, although you’ll need to know HTML for that.
This isn’t entirely perfect, the dickhead could use a proxy or similar to hide their IP address, and IP’s do change over time (although less so now most people use routers). Either way, it’s just a small and simple way to disrupt those who like to deliberately upset. The way I see it, is that it’s all traffic to your blog, all extra ads being shown, stats don’t care if your readers like you or not 😉
Thanks for the hits, trolls!
I had a particularly nasty troll last week. I managed to trace them through their ip and find out it was actually a mum I know from toddler group! Confronting her stopped the messages but this is really useful. Trolls aren’t usually that easily traced so an ip ban is perfect. Thanks for the tutorial.
So far I have been really lucky and not had any trolls at all but this blog is only a little over a year old, no doubt they will eventually come! Useful post, thanks Kip!
I’m incredibly thin skinned and very fortunate to have only been trolled twice in nearly 3 years. The first troll really upset me but I’m now happy to just hit “delete” in the comments. This plug in sounds great and ill be sure to install it ready for use. Thanks
Bye bye Trolls 🙂
Didn’t know there was a plugin, so easy.
I’m on blogger but use discus for comments which whilst a pain in the arse, can be useful as a troll deterrent. I had a great one who was persistent over a number of months, then really said something I was upset about. Turns out he submitted his email to discus in order to comment. His work email. His university work email.
He was trolling me in work time, and happened to be married to one of the teachers at Joseph’s nursery school.
Lovely moment emailing him telling him to back off or I’d tell his manager