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Link Limits is a WordPress plugin that places some restrictions on the number of hyperlinks that your users can include in their comments. It is rare for legitimate comments to include hyperlinks, and those that do almost never include more than two at most. However, a very high proportion of spam comments exceed these limits, and BBCode should raise red warning flags all over the place, because most WordPress blogs don’t use it. If you’re not sure what BBCode is, it’s where you get comments with links that look like this:

[url=http://www.example.com/]An example hyperlink[/url]

Link Limits rejects comments outright if they contain more than two hyperlinks, or if they contain any hyperlinks at all in BBCode format. This should make it easier to manage your spam queue and check it for false positives. It also displays a short note on your comment form advising your visitors that you have these restrictions in place.

If you have Three Strikes and You’re Out installed, Link Limits also notifies it of failed attempts to post comments with excessive hyperlinks.

Installation and configuration

Download the archive and unzip the file link-limits.php into your /wp-content/plugins directory.

If you want to change the number of hyperlinks that you allow in comments, edit the file to change number in the line that says

define ('MAX_HYPERLINKS', 2);

If you don’t want to allow hyperlinks at all, set it to zero. If you want to allow unlimited hyperlinks and just check for BBCode, comment this line out.

Requirements

Link Limits has been tested on WordPress 2.1.2 and 2.2. It is expected to work on all versions of WordPress >= 2.0, and may also work on version 1.5, although if so, this is more by accident than by design.

If you run into problems, I’ve written a blog entry on how to report problems with WordPress plugins. Please read it and do what it says before shouting at me!

Download

• Link Limits 1.0 alpha 1 (.zip)
• Link Limits 1.0 alpha 1 (.tar.gz)