Just a quick WordPress snippet for future reference. I recently explained how to disable comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks via SQL. Here’s a good way to do it via PHP:

<?php 
function close_comments( $posts ) {
	if ( !is_single() ) { return $posts; }
	if ( time() - strtotime( $posts[0]->post_date_gmt ) > ( 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 ) ) {
		$posts[0]->comment_status = 'closed';
		$posts[0]->ping_status    = 'closed';
	}
	return $posts;
}
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'close_comments' ); 
?>

You can run this script as a plugin, through your theme’s functions.php, or through a custom user-functions.php file. Simply set the desired number of days by changing the number “30” to whatever you would like. As is, this script will close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks on all articles posted more than 30 days ago.

Continuing my quest to stop comment spam without using plugins, I have decided to disable comments on “old” posts. In my experience, over 90% of comment, trackback and pingback spam occurs on posts that have been online for over a month or so, just long enough to be indexed by the search engines and picked up by spammers. Especially for older posts that have managed to acquire a little page rank, the frequency of spam attempts is far greater than it is for fresher content. Throw dofollow comment status into the mix, and say “hello” to a hellish number of spam attempts on established pages. Thus, my evolving anti-spam strategy now includes discussion management, which involves periodic closing of feedback on older posts. In this article, we will examine currently available methods of managing comments, and then proceed with a versatile toolbox of SQL queries for complete discussion management.

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What are these trackbacks?