Stopping WordPress Comment Spam when using WP Discourse

Introduction

When using the WP Discourse plugin on your WordPress site, you need to ensure that comments are enabled as the WP Discourse plugin will hook into all of the portions of the WordPress comment system. Unfortunately this causes the endpoint for comment posting wp-comments-post.php to still be active and accepting of requests, which bots will eventually use to try and post comments.

Solutions

1 – WP Discourse

There isn’t a solution within the WP Discourse plugin to block these requests.

2 – Code Snippet to Block wp-comments-post.php

You can use the following code snippet to block the requests, I’ve done minimal testing and it’s worked.

<?php
// Block wp-comments-post.php when using WP Discourse plugin - managingwp.io 01-24-2023

function disable_wp_comments_post() {
    if (basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) === 'wp-comments-post.php') {
        status_header(403);
        die();
    }
}
add_action('init', 'disable_wp_comments_post');