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This page contains the installation guide and usage notes for Bad Behavior on WordPress.

Installation

Bad Behavior requires WordPress 3.1 or later. Version 3.3 or later is recommended. Bad Behavior is compatible with network (multi-site) installations and can either be network activated or activated on a blog-by-blog basis.

To install Bad Behavior, visit your WordPress administration (or network administration) page, click Plugins, then click Add New, type Bad Behavior in the search box, and then click Install Now next to the Bad Behavior search result.

Manual Installation

Bad Behavior installs like any other multi-file WordPress plugin. Unzip the bad-behavior.zip file, and you will have a bad-behavior folder containing all the Bad Behavior files.

Upload both the folder and its contents to your wp-content/plugins directory, taking care to use ASCII mode. You should end up with a bad-behavior folder in your plugins folder which contains the Bad Behavior files. Once on the server, activate the plugin from your admin page.

Upgrading

If you have at least version 2.0.19 of Bad Behavior, you can use WordPress to upgrade Bad Behavior automatically. Simply visit your Plugins page and click the link to update automatically.

Upgrading from pre-2.0 (Historic)

If you are upgrading from any version prior to the 2.0 release of Bad Behavior, you need to perform the following steps before installation:

First, remove all copies of Bad Behavior 1.x and any pre-release copies of Bad Behavior 2. Then, use phpMyAdmin, the MySQL command line, or another tool to remove any *bad_behavior or *bad_behavior_log tables in your database.

Now you are ready to install Bad Behavior version 2. Use the directions above to install Bad Behavior.

Usage

After installation you don’t need to do anything! Bad Behavior protects all of your WordPress posts, pages and feeds automatically.

You can configure Bad Behavior from the Settings » Bad Behavior administration screen. In addition to the standard options, you can configure the following additional options with WordPress:

Display Statistics (default off): You can display Bad Behavior statistics in your blog footer. Displaying statistics can be database intensive and is not recommended for high traffic sites. Some WordPress themes may display the stats in strange places or with odd styling; if this happens, contact your theme designer for assistance.

To view the Bad Behavior log, visit Tools » Bad Behavior. Log entries shown here have several clickable fields which can be used to filter the log entries by user agent, IP address, block reason and more.

Caching Plugins

Bad Behavior works with WP Super Cache. If you’re using a very old caching plugin like WP-Cache, Staticize Reloaded or some other plugin, please upgrade. By simply activating the Bad Behavior plugin, you will receive protection from comments and trackbacks, however spambots will still be able to crawl your site.

To enable Bad Behavior to protect cached pages, enable Bad Behavior Support in WP Super Cache’s settings page. (Due to a serious bug in older releases of WP Super Cache, you should update to the current release of WP Super Cache.) Note that Bad Behavior cannot prevent access to “super cached” pages in WP Super Cache’s mod_rewrite mode; Bad Behavior can only protect “cached” pages in WP Super Cache’s PHP cache or legacy cache modes. Bad Behavior protects submission forms regardless of which WP Super Cache caching mode you select.

Bad Behavior works with W3 Total Cache and no changes are needed. Note that when using W3 Total Cache, Bad Behavior is unable to protect cached pages; however, Bad Behavior still protects uncached pages and all submission forms.

2 Responses

  1. I had to de-activate bad behavior because it was blocking all comments. One commenter received this message: Error 403

    We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-comments-post.php on this server.

    You do not have permission to access this server. Data may not be posted from offsite forms.

    Your technical support key is: 43ef-6418-cd36-1abb
    Please help me fix this

    • Jeff, I took a look at your blog. When I try to post a comment, I get redirected to jetpack.me, which makes me think you are sending your comments out to a third-party service, that later sends them back to your blog. Unfortunately the jetpack service just asked me to download Jetpack and never posted my comment.

      If you mean to use this Jetpack service to handle your comments, then just enable the Offsite Forms option in Bad Behavior.