Delete Spam Daily Plugin

This plugin schedules a daily event using wp_cron that deletes all comments marked “spam” in the database, then optimizes the comments table.

Brief reason why I made such a low-tech plugin:

Akismet catches all the spam, but when I was looking at the size of my backups one day,
I noticed that there were large numbers of comment spam across several sites that were undeleted and they
made the databases fairly large. So I setup a cron job on my server that deletes the spam.

Since I had never written a plugin, I thought this might be helpful for those who do not have
a dedicated server, shell access to their site, or the knowledge of (or interest in ) cron to set this up.

Spam is not deleted until you start the schedule after the plugin is activated. I created buttons
to start and stop the schedule if you need that layer of control. There is also a button for deleting all spam manually.

1. Upload the delete-spam-daily folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Look under “Settings” –> “Delete Spam Daily” to activate the schedule.
4. You can start and stop the schedule from the “Delete Spam Daily” menu.

1. 

   Pretty simple.

What time does comment spam get deleted?

The first time you start the schedule, spam gets deleted.
Subsequent spam will be scheduled to delete every 24 hours after the first activation.

If I de-activate this plugin, will it continue to delete spam daily?

No. The cron job is cleared upon deactivation.

• Version 1.0.2 – 5.28.09: Now optimizes the wp_comments table after spam is deleted. Updated DB call to allow for alternate wordpress table prefix.
• Version 1.0.1 – 5.26.09: Minor update. add_action was added to the “Delete Spam Daily” button so it would actually delete spam once a day. 🙂 In addition to a “Stop Deleting Spam” button, a button was added that reschedules the cron to happen in 1 minute so you can be sure your crons are working right away.
• Version 1.0 – 5.25.09: Initial Release. Included button to start deleting spam daily, and a button to delete spam immediately. Once the schedule was activated, it provided a button to stop the schedule. Shows current spam count and next scheduled delete.