Here’s a small plugin that does a small but useful task. It reports where the people who comment on your blog come from. It then adds a line to the end of your comment notification or moderation emails with that information.
Download: comment-referrers.txt
Install by renaming the file to .php and placing in your plugins folder and activating it on your WordPress plugins page.
Update! Here’s the plugin page for this plugin.
60 Comments
n-blue (1 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 4:28 pm.
Small plugin but great idea. I like it and found very useful.
adam (6 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 4:33 pm.
cool stuff. does wordpress understand the referrer already, or does this require a specific stats package?
Donncha (1707 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 4:39 pm.
Adam – the plugin uses a small bit of Javascript to get the referrer and adds it to the comment form. Nothing else needed!
Andrew (3 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 4:54 pm.
Just tested it with wpmu and I didn’t notice any bugs. Nice work!
Thanks,
Andrew
Ike (1 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:01 pm.
Excellent. Maybe I can use it to see where the spam is coming from…
Chess Teacher (2 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:03 pm.
Nice plugin
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Ilias (1 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:09 pm.
Nice Idea & plugin.. I just activated it.. ! Really useful !
Nat (1 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:12 pm.
That’s a really good idea. It would be easy to add other information about the user too, wouldn’t it? such as browser string, country, etc?
Donncha (1707 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:12 pm.
Ike – unfortunately the spammers either don’t have a referrer or pass on the string escape(ref).
Donncha (1707 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:14 pm.
Nat – sure would, just add the appropriate browser variable to the Javascript and PHP parts!
Mark Jaquith (18 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:17 pm.
If we had a commentmeta table, we could store this information with the comment.
dahamsta (2 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 6:26 pm.
Nice Donncha, thanks!
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Tech Rant (1 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 9:27 pm.
Shame it doesn’t help much with bot Spammers, but it’s always nice to know where your active users are coming from. I’d love to see something like this on Postnuke…
Flick (2 comments.) on August 21, 2007 at 10:01 pm.
Thanks for the recommendation
Am going to try it now as it’s always good to find out a bit more about sites that link back!
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Matt (15 comments.) on August 22, 2007 at 6:06 am.
Dude put it on the plugin directory!
Feral Pundit (1 comments.) on August 22, 2007 at 6:20 am.
Great Plugin. Thanks for a simple install plugin that is useful.
Any added user referrer features are a great addon. It’s not only fun to see where your visitors, commenters, etc, are coming from but helpful in terms of content, language and safety.
Feral Pundit (1 comments.) on November 30, 2009 at 3:26 am.
Who is using my name? I never said this. I should post this on my blog!
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GnomeyNewt (1 comments.) on August 22, 2007 at 7:52 am.
Great idea! Have just installed and will enjoying testing/using this new plugin.
paul (1 comments.) on August 22, 2007 at 11:46 am.
This could be interesting, it would be great it you kept the first referring sites details too. i.e. you could check the google string the used when they arrived and see what ones get you more comments.
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Dave (2 comments.) on August 23, 2007 at 4:10 pm.
I have installed this plugin on my blog as instructed but am not seeing referrers in comment notifications. Am I missing something?
- Dave
Donncha (1707 comments.) on August 23, 2007 at 4:13 pm.
Dave – make sure there’s a referrer to report. Click on a post from your homepage and enter a comment. If you have WP-Cache installed you should clear the cache too.
Dave (2 comments.) on August 23, 2007 at 4:21 pm.
OK. I got it now. Thanks.
Elaine Vigneault (1 comments.) on August 24, 2007 at 6:46 pm.
This is a great idea. I can see it working in two ways:
1. When you receive a lot of negative feedback on a blog post, it can help you identify if these are regular readers or if they are new readers coming from another source, possibly where they’ve been told to leave nasty comments. If it’s the latter, you can choose to ban them until their hostility settles down (with the wp-ban plugin).
2. When you receive a lot of positive/ feedback on a post, you can thank whoever sent the readers by sending the referrer an email or giving them a link.
Al (1 comments.) on August 29, 2007 at 3:58 am.
I’ve had great luck with spam karma 2.
David Precious (18 comments.) on September 3, 2007 at 11:26 am.
Just wanted to say that the plugin is working a treat for me – nice work
I don’t get many commenters on my blog, but it’s definately nice to get an idea where people came from.
Richard Catto (4 comments.) on November 25, 2007 at 7:29 pm.
This plugin is a miracle worker!
Thank you!
It tells me where people found my articles when they leave a comment. Very very useful!
WordPress webmaster – get this plugin! You need it!
Mike - Freelance Web Designer (2 comments.) on December 11, 2007 at 8:42 am.
Great little plugin, i’ve just been trying it out on one of my newish blogs which is getting spammed to death! One step closer to a spam free world is definately a good thing!
SEO Monitoring (1 comments.) on January 26, 2008 at 4:56 am.
Not really sure why you would need this, but I guess if you really want to know where your comments are coming from then this could be useful.
I think if you wanted to take this to the next level you would store the results in a table then graph the results using jpgraph or something similar.
seocontest2008 (1 comments.) on February 10, 2008 at 9:23 am.
I noticed in the small image screenshot you have, aside from Approve it and Delete it, you have spam it. I do not have that in my emails. I only have Approve and Delete. Does your plugin also activate the Spam it? Or is this another plugin that I don’t have right now.
David (1 comments.) on February 12, 2008 at 9:32 pm.
I really like this plugin. I think it’s good to find out these things.
Facebook Addict on February 19, 2008 at 12:34 am.
Great idea, a referrer plugin
That’s why I love wordpress, when you get the community involved with open source, everyone benefits. Thanks!
Joe on February 19, 2008 at 11:08 am.
Does it really bug you that much? I just use Spam Karma for WP and I rarely have to delete anything.
redtube (1 comments.) on February 25, 2008 at 6:56 pm.
Excellent. Maybe I can use it to see where the spam is coming from…
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ChrisM (3 comments.) on February 27, 2008 at 3:07 pm.
>>seocontest2008
You need to activate your Akismet plugin – as provided automatically with WordPress
You’ll need to grab an API code, or whatever its labelled from wordpress.com I think.
Vlad - Small Business and Web Design on February 28, 2008 at 4:37 pm.
Great plugin, installed it on my blog.
Since it’s not that much of a code, I think it would be a good idea to have it incorporated into WordPress code itself.
Scott (1 comments.) on March 2, 2008 at 5:04 am.
What I’m wondering is,if the person is actually contributing to the conversation with a legit comment,why would you object to them trying to get some traffic and rank on their site? I could understand if it was something generic like “Nice Blog,great post.” But it seems that the person actually had read the post and actually commented appropriately.
Am I missing something?
Donncha (1707 comments.) on March 2, 2008 at 10:57 am.
Scott – not when the person intentionally goes looking for blogs to comment on. It’s even more evil and sneaky than “ordinary” spam because it’s harder to spot.
Warhammer Online on March 2, 2008 at 10:44 pm.
Excellent, thanks a lot for the plugin.
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ScottUA (1 comments.) on March 10, 2008 at 5:23 pm.
This sure comes in really handy. I wouldn’t mind getting a lot of comments. The plugin will let me know who’s who and where they are.
Janni on March 16, 2008 at 7:58 pm.
I have tested too and in my opinion is free of bugs. Nice work guys.
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Rob on March 25, 2008 at 4:41 pm.
Spam karma 2 tends to block almost everything, even legit comments.
ChrisM (3 comments.) on March 25, 2008 at 7:11 pm.
>>Rob – have you reported your problems to the author(s?) of Bad Karma? I’ve not had any friends report problems with posting comments in the past. I’m sure if the problem could be found, that the people responsible for the plugin would want to improve it…
Baby Clothes from Jack and Abby on July 10, 2008 at 9:06 am.
What shows up if the visitor comes from a bookmark, like I did?
Jack
Donncha (1707 comments.) on July 10, 2008 at 10:07 am.
Jack – you’ll just have to install it, but I doubt you will because I think you’re a spammer
RedDeath (1 comments.) on July 17, 2008 at 7:39 pm.
Thanks a lot! This is just what I need!
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Chris Merriman (1 comments.) on October 29, 2008 at 10:29 pm.
I notice that referrers aren’t always included – would this only happen if they access the post directly, from a bookmark, or are there other situations I should consider?
I meant to ask, is the plugin not supposed to link to its page over at the official WP repository?
Also, in case you’ve not seen it, there is a support query over at http://wordpress.org/support/topic/160621
Donncha (1707 comments.) on October 30, 2008 at 12:18 am.
Chris – referrers aren’t shown when there isn’t one. Lately I’ve noticed an increase in spam comments with a referrer and noticed a pattern in my logs from the IPs of those commenters.
The spammers have a new tool, it’s probably desktop based and probably launches a browser with the post in question. Those comments don’t have referrers.
I didn’t have a specific page ready for the plugin when I created it, so I do need to point it at the right one now. Doesn’t have to be the wporg plugin page though. Thanks for noticing!
John on September 24, 2009 at 2:42 pm.
i dont think this is going to stop spammers. We have to find a more reliable solution.
Donncha (1707 comments.) on September 24, 2009 at 2:45 pm.
HAHAHA, oh yes it will. You came from a Google search for “spam karma 2″ “Name” “Email” “Leave a Reply” so I removed your email address (so you can’t leave further comments without moderation) and your url too. Bye bye spammer!
Danny (1 comments.) on September 24, 2009 at 3:02 pm.
I don’t really understand much about this stuff but here goes. Thanks Donncha.