Delete old Trackbacks

[Nando]

My website host is complaining that my blog database is heavy loading the server (using too many resources). First move I made was to stop allowing trackbacks and pingbacks. The only problem I think is that I solved future problems with spam. What about the old trackbacks and pingbacks? I believe they are still linking to my site.

Is there a way to I remove them directly in the database? Any other solution so that my host stop complaining about server abuse?

Thank you

[Graham]

Why do you have to delete them directly from the db? Why can't you use b2evo's interface? It's exactly the same as deleteing a comment.

[Nando]

How am I suposed to manually delete trackbacks (one by one) since 2002 ? There must be a way to delete them all at once. Is there?

[Graham]

I'm still not understanding why you have to delete all your trackbacks. If it is referer spam, you can search for the affected strings in the antispam tab. Anyway, if you really insist on editing the database manually, you can look in the comments table, and search for trackback or pingback as the comment_type. I believe you can just delete the entries, but I've never tried it so I don't know if it will kill your db or not. Make a back up first. This is why I've been suggesting that you do this via the backoffice, since that won't kill anything.

[Nando]

I deleted and added a lot of string to the antispam thing (the ones with more hits acording to the logs). Are you sure that just doing this will solve my problem?

thanks

[Graham]

No, I'm not, like I already said. It will delete your existing trackbacks, but it could also kill your db. If you're meaning will this stop future trackback spam, then no it won't, but there are loads of threads on this forum about comment and trackback spam, and most of the techniques are covered. The main one you should do to stop tb spam is to rename the htsrv directory, as listed here:

http://tin-men.net/blog/how_i_...on_my_site

[Nando]

Let's go step by step:

1- What I did to stop future spams was to disable trackbacks and pingbacks. Will it stop future spams?

2- I wanted to stop the spam from old trackbacks, so I added several hits (acording to my logs) to the antispam blacklist. Is it enough to stop getting hits from the old trackbacks?

I still haven't touched my database yet and I won't if what I've done so far will at least solve 80% of my problems...

Is there still a need to make some changes as the one mentioned in the link you gave me above?

[Graham]

[Nando]

Ok, thank you

[Graham]

And of course, I assumed you meant trackbacks on your blog pointing to the p0rn sites and the like, because you obviously can't delete tb's made to other people's sites since you can't access their blogging applications.

[Nando]

sure