Making Your WordPress Life a Bit Easier – How to Block Idiots

If you all can believe it, I get a ton of hate mail. Weird, because I am such a dainty, retiring flower. Despite this, I already have a large following of idiots who regularly read my page and wish for my death on a daily basis.

Here’s the thing. I don’t have time to read all the hate messages I get or even to delete them from my page. I write novels. I have several full time freelancing clients that keep me more than busy. Sometimes, I can’t even squeeze in the time to drink until I pass out!

So I had to start letting my site do a little moderation for me. I initially started doing this when I was running a WordPress.com site, and I know most of my followers are WordPress.com users, so the tips I’m going to help you with are designed to use on a WordPress.com platform.

If you need to ban users or comments on an .org platform, I highly recommend Ban User By IP, which makes it so you can ban certain users from your entire page just by entering their IP. It’s kinda awesome. Instead of my page, they get a 404 error page. But I actually only use this plugin as a last resort.

See, I want these users coming to my page. Even if their coming to my page because they hate me, it’s still a site hit. Their still doing me a service, because there is no such thing as a bad site hit, just like there is allegedly no such thing as bad publicity.

The bad publicity thing is bullshit, by the way. Ask any BP exec.

But I really don’t want them being able to share their idiotic opinions. Why? Because we will all be dumber for having listened to them.

This is my page. That means that I get to decide who posts on it. If I don’t feel like letting someone share their opinion on here, that’s all there is to it. I don’t owe you the opportunity to voice your opinion. If you feel that passionately about it, I suggest that you write your own post about whatever the hell I’m bitching about. It will still be stupid, but at least it will be yours.

So, if you’ve started to develop a problem with idiots commenting on your page, I’m going to show a super easy way using an example from someone I recently banned because I felt they were too stupid to fully appreciate my comedic genius.

The first thing you will need is their IP address. For that, go to manage your comments and find their most recent comment. The last line under their gravitar will be their IP address. Here’s a screenshot showing you exactly where it is;

You’ll notice I did the courtesy of blocking out that persons email address. Lets all consider that my good deed for the day. Copy that IP address and paste it into a word doc. A quick highlight and a ‘CTRL+C” is the fastest way. Paste is “CTRL+V”.

Next, go to ‘Settings” and click on “Discussion’. Here’s another screen shot, because I’m feeling generous;

Finally, copy and paste that IP address into this box.

You’ll notice that I have my entire box blacked out. This is because it is chock full of keywords and IP addresses that have been permanently banned from commenting on my site. For example, when someone types the phase ‘ur a cunt’, they automatically go to my spam box. While it might not prevent all hatemail, it does require that they think of a more eloquently worded way to insult me. Either way, I kept this hidden because I didn’t really want to give my haters a listing of words to avoid when they were trying to post to my page.

In this box, you can ban users by their emails, by any keywords, by their user names and by their IP addresses. This will make all their comments that they try to leave go to your spam box immediately. Then, if you’re like me, you let those hate comments get buried by spam. You never even see them as you click your ‘empty all spam’ button in your spam folder once a month.

It’s really a great way to get back at them, because you know those idiots are probably getting furious knowing that you never see any of their messages. No matter how long they sit there trying to type out eloquent responses calling you a ‘fat ugly bich’ or some other equally genius reply.

Using this process, I haven’t had to deal with a hate message in weeks. In fact, the only time I actually see any of my hate messages is when I’m drunk, angry and digging through my spam box for someone to start a fight with. Then, I pick out a comment at random and attack. Good times.

It is so much fun owning the internet.