SK2 FAQ
Install Errors
Help ! Nothing works ! SK2 Doesn’t stop any spam ! I cannot load the options page ! etc.
Make sure you enable the plugin in WordPress, wp-admin > Plugins, then browse to wp-admin > Manage > Spam Karma 2, or wp-admin > Options > Spam Karma 2. Also make sure your computer is plugged-in and switched-on.
Fatal error. Cannot access empty property
This bug used to appear at times in the admin section, and was fixed in a silent minor-bug fixing release. If you are experiencing it, please download from the server again and re-install.
Cannot Redeclare errors
If you get “cannot redeclare” errors in the options page, try disabling and then re-enabling the plugin.
Blank or Error Page
If you get a blank or error page upon going to the Option screen for SK2 wp-admin > Options > Spam Karma 2, or even do not see the Spam Karma 2 tab in the Options menu at all:
- Make sure you have correctly upgraded your install of WordPress to 1.5.1 or newer (any 2.x version is fine, of course).
- If the problem persists, remove the SK2 directory and copy all SK2 files directly under the plugins directory. Keep the folder structure within the SK2 folder intact. The final result should be /wp-content/plugins/ containing the 13 files from the SK2 folder, plus the folder sk2_plugins.
Troubleshooting
What should I do if SK2 eats a legit comment?
Spam Karma 2 stops every comment
If SK2 seems to stop every single comment and flag it as spam (in particular if it reports a “missing payload”), your theme is likely incompatible with WP 1.5. On the General Settings tab, near the bottom of the page, are several theme compatibility tests to run: if you receive errors, fix those problems. The Theme Check messages should be self-explanatory. Another option is to temporarily or permanently change the template you’re using: the WordPress Default template based on Kubrick is one good choice.
Cannot find SQL tables
E.g., “wp_sk2_spams doesn’t exist” error: First try the Force MySQL Update button in SK2’s General Settings page. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, then move on to Reset All Tables (beware that the latter will lose all SK2-related settings . . . your comments will remain unaffected, of course).
Cannot Load Spam Karma 2
If you click the options tag and receive “Cannot load spam_karma_2_plugin.php.” message, check to see if you have activated the plugin first.
Cannot redeclare sk2_add_options()
Navigate to the Manage or Options menus directly instead of using the link on the Plugins page. Alternatively, change the link in spam_karma_2_plugin.php from:
edit.php?page=spam_karma_2_plugin.php
to
edit.php?page=spamkarma2
Incorrect comment counts in WordPress 2.0
If the comment counts on your new posts after upgrading to WordPress 2.0 seem… sparse, it’s because WordPress updated its database schema with version 2.0. You need to update your version of SK2 to the latest, in order to have a proper comment count.
Blank admin pages after activating SK2 in WordPress 2.0
This is a WordPress bug. It is covered in the WordPress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/54292. Try upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. It has been fixed in v2.0.1.
Captcha images not displayed correctly
If SK2 is working correctly except that the captcha images are not displayed, a likely cause is that you don’t have the PHP bindings for the GD2 library installed. On Debian or Ubuntu, this is easily fixed by running ‘apt-get install php5-gd’. You may need to restart Apache after that. I assume the solution for other systems is similar.
No comment hook (Theme Compatibility)
If you get hit with the “Could not find do_action hook in comments.php” error. It turns out that the theme I’m using had an old comments.php, one that didn’t have the new (1.5) do_action('comment_form') piece of code in it. Thankfully the theme author had updated his theme, so all I needed to do was to replace my old comments.php file with the new updated one from the theme author.
If you’re still using a WordPress 1.2 theme with WordPress 1.5 then you can use the following quick hack to get it working, though you really would be better off using/porting to a proper 1.5 theme.
First (optionally) disable the Javascript Payload and Encrypted Payload filters in Spam Karma settings so you don’t see any more false positives whilst doing the editing - you can re-enable it later.
Secondly, edit comments.php for the theme you are using. Find the line saying:
<form action="<?php echo get_settings('siteurl'); ?>/wp-comments-post.php"
method="post" id="commentform">
Just below it, add:
<?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?>
Save and upload and check your comment form for hidden inputs starting with sk2. Presuming it’s all working you can then re-enable the check and all will be good again.
Note that in many themes, this do_action bit comes elsewhere in the comments.php file. For example, in the “classic” and “default” themes, this hook typically comes just before the line saying
</form>
Note:
This problem may also manifest itself with the following error:
Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/your-site/public_html/wpress/wp-content/plugins/spam_karma_2_plugin.php on line 903
Following the hint above ought to fix it. You can also take the classic comments.php and comments-popup.php files from the 1.5.1 version of WordPress (possibly add your own changes back in), and copy them into your current theme folder.
You will encounter errors if you accidentally include the hook more than once. Make sure you have one and only one.
“X Spams Eaten” message does not display in my footer
Make sure your theme file is WP 1.5-compatible:
- open the footer.php file for your theme (by default, it should be located in wp-content/themes/your_theme)
- look for the line containing:
Farida Bottse said,
April 5, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I’ve istalled SK2. Everything seems to wrok fine except I get this warning when I go to the option screen:
Warning: Failed opening ’sk2_functions.php’ for inclusion (include_path=”) in /home/sites/site58/web/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_util_class.php on line 2
What am I doing wrong?
Dave said,
April 5, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Farida: Most likely, you forgot to copy the file “sk2_functions.php” along with the others. Try re-installing SK2 from scratch, making sure you copy all the files.
Farida Bottse said,
April 6, 2007 at 8:28 am
I’ve re-installed SK2 again and copied all the files. When I go to the remote site on my server I can see all the files including “sk2_functions.php”. I still get the same warning. So this didn’t solve the problem.
Milan said,
April 15, 2007 at 10:09 am
For some reason, I sometimes find that SK2 stops giving spam ratings to any new comments. It then puts them at the top of the list, in blue, with a question mark beside them. It does this even for comments posted using my own admin account.
In the past, turning off the snowball effect and/or RBL system has cleared up the problem. Now, it is being more persistent. What could be wrong?
The Hermit said,
April 15, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Milan, When I’ve had that problem, I’ve re-run the submission through all plugins again, but the problem has never been persistent, just occasional or intermittent.
What causes it is curious. Perhaps Dave will have some insight.
Milan said,
April 15, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Hermit,
It has been intermittent for me as well. One other curious recent development: I don’t get emailed any comments at all for days, then about fifty of them all at once.
It seems to me like there is some kind of kink in the whole PHP/MySQL system.
Kelly said,
April 21, 2007 at 3:55 am
I get this error message. Am I putting it in the wrong folder? “Cannot get file list: ‘/home/youthtec/public_html/eye4youalliance/wpcontent/plugins/sk2_plugins/’ is not a valid folder path”
Jim said,
April 24, 2007 at 8:08 am
Ditto for me. Have the same error message!
Gulli said,
April 24, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Entering Manage -> Spam Karma 2 yields alarming red boxes saying:
Could not alter SQL table: wp_posts.
SQL error: Duplicate key name ‘post_date’
Could not alter SQL table: wp_posts.
SQL error: Duplicate key name ‘post_date_gmt’
That’s harmless, right?
../Ant said,
April 25, 2007 at 10:04 pm
When I try go to Spam Karma 2 Options the pages fill with html garbage :
Mannie said,
May 9, 2007 at 6:51 am
Guess something i am missing.
It don’t put the info in my footer. Any ideas ?
Mannie said,
May 12, 2007 at 5:04 am
guess not
Dave said,
May 23, 2007 at 4:18 am
Hello,
Most of your questions have been answered in the updated FAQ above. If not, please contact me directly using the contact form on this site.
David Esrati said,
June 2, 2007 at 11:56 am
I’m getting 3 error messages:
Could not alter SQL table: comments.
SQL error: Duplicate key name ‘comment_date_gmt’
Could not alter SQL table: posts.
SQL error: Duplicate key name ‘post_date’
Could not alter SQL table: posts.
SQL error: Duplicate key name ‘post_date_gmt’
after updating to 2.3 rc1
running wp 2.1.3
not sure if you are compatible with 2.2 yet-
any suggestions?
David Esrati said,
June 4, 2007 at 5:59 am
Updated to 2.3 rc3 solved problem. Sorry.
Daniel Spisak said,
June 14, 2007 at 10:34 am
I just recently installed SK2.3 RC1 and now on only the first post on my blog currently here:
http://blog.nonmundane.org/archives/2007/06/14/testesone-twothree/
I see a bright red box that says:
“It sounds like SK2 has recently been updated on this blog. But not fully configured. You MUST visit Spam Karma’s admin page at least once before letting it filter your comments (chaos may ensue otherwise).”
I have visited SK’s admin page multiple times and it is not going away. Help?
PHP 5.1.6, MySQL 5, Apache 1.3, OpenBSD 4.1
Daniel Spisak said,
June 14, 2007 at 10:37 am
Erm, make that SK2.3 RC4
Tim said,
June 16, 2007 at 9:54 am
Dave,
I’m having a problem with a new theme on my site. I am trying to center the Spam Karma notice at the bottom of the page (footer), so it doesn’t appear at the top.
It only appears this way on Firefox, not IE.
It doesn’t tell me anywhere, what to go and change the commands.
Any advice?
Dave said,
June 22, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I just got a complaint from someone who regularly posts comments to my blog that all her comments have vanished, and that she’s now blocked from submitting more comments. I don’t see her comments on the Recent Spam Harvest page. How can I retrieve her past comments and whitelist her for the future?
Kirsty said,
July 3, 2007 at 4:58 am
I know that SK2 works with WordPress MU - but it doesn’t seem to work if you are using subdirectories rather than subdomains as the menu’s seem to loose the subdirectories
Piet said,
July 8, 2007 at 12:23 am
Hi Dave,
I’m using your plugin in a couple of blogs, but in my latest I have come across a problem that I haven’t encountered before:
After the advanced compatibility check I get these two messages:
URL (placed a url with contact form): Could not find Payload in comment form. Your theme is likely not compatible. Make sure you used a URL that contains your blog’s comment form, try again and, if still getting this result, please refer to SK2’s documentation.
Temporarily disabling form payload check.
I cannot find this problem in your support documentation, have tried what you describe in 2.9 (comment hook), but to no effect…
Do you perhaps have a solution?
Thanks,
Piet
Keith said,
July 9, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Installing SK2 2.3 rc4 under Wordpress 2.2, clicking ACTIVATE under the plugin tabs yielded a blank screen, and the plugin was not activated.
The error in Apache httpd/error_log was
PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 14592 bytes)
so I added an .htaccess file containing the line
php_value memory_limit 16M
and I put this file in my MAIN WORDPRESS DIRECTORY.
I honestly don’t know if this could have been put in a lower subdirectory (like maybe in the SK2 plugin folder?) but this worked.
Everything activates, manage…..sk2 works….. etc
Tom said,
August 5, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I am having same problem as Piet:
So when I select comment is asked to be logged in ?? I think SPAM Karma is causing this as I have rechecked all my settings.
After the advanced compatibility check I get these two messages:
URL (placed a url with contact form): Could not find Payload in comment form. Your theme is likely not compatible. Make sure you used a URL that contains your blog’s comment form, try again and, if still getting this result, please refer to SK2’s documentation.
Temporarily disabling form payload check.
I cannot find this problem in your support documentation, have tried what you describe in 2.9 (comment hook), but to no effect…
Do you perhaps have a solution?
CiNNeR said,
August 7, 2007 at 7:36 pm
When someone gets the catcha, first there is an error message saying: Warning: session_start() [function.session-start]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /home/cinnernl/domains/cinner.com/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_second_chance.php:2) in /home/cinnernl/domains/cinner.com/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wordspew/wordspew.php on line 35
And it seems after filling in the catchha, people get an page stating that the comment is posted but have to find their way to the homepage themselves.
Is there someting I can fix about this?
(By the way, it’s working excellent so far!!)
MrPete said,
October 14, 2007 at 12:40 am
OK, so I want to whitelist a subdomain/folder
foo.bar.com/WhiteList.This.folder
What’s the format of the regex_whitelist string? I’m very familiar with regex.
Is it as simple as
or
???
Mert Erkal said,
November 24, 2007 at 10:06 am
I got following error message, could you please tell me what is wrong :
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /home/gktyktof/public_html/searchforblogging/wp-content/plugins/SK2/sk2_comment_class.php on line 270
Already checked FAQ and Troubleshooting pages, but could not find an answer. Thanks in advance!
The Hermit said,
November 24, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Don’t forget to search the Internet for your problem: “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end” (without quotes). There are a number of pages for that error (a PHP issue, or an error in the file?). The first thing I’d likely try is to download SK2 again, unpack it, delete the existing one from your server, then upload that same file from the new download to your server.
twentyone said,
December 30, 2007 at 1:37 am
I use spam karma with wordpress, would it be possible to still receive an email when a comment has been approved? I normally got a notification via email, but that seems tho have been disabled now? Haven’t had an email since. I can’t find a setting to enable that again.
Case Stevens said,
February 1, 2008 at 4:08 am
SK sends an email about a comment that I can’t find in the Admin section. When I use the URL in the email to delete it as spam, SK2 can’t find the entry.
After lots of research (I’m not a techie), it appeared that there were 2 keys defined in the blacklist table. Removed the second one (on comment ID) and thought that was it.
But it happened again yesterday. What could cause this to happen? Any ideas and advice is welcome.
Thanks,
Case
Anthony said,
March 13, 2008 at 11:53 am
Hi, I am having an odd error, and I have re-installed the plugin, searched the web for an answer, and also “forced SQL update”. This is the error I get when selecting the “recent spam harvest” or “approved comments” tabs:
Can’t fetch comments.
Query: SELECT `posts_table`.`post_title`, `spam_table`.`karma`, `spam_table`.`id` as `spam_id`,`spam_table`.`karma_cmts`, `comments_table`.*, IF(`comments_table`.`comment_approved` = ‘0′, 1, 0) AS `display_priority` FROM (`wp_comments` AS `comments_table`, `wp_posts` AS `posts_table`) LEFT JOIN `wp_sk2_spams` AS `spam_table` ON `spam_table`.`comment_ID` = `comments_table`.`comment_ID` WHERE `comment_approved` != ‘1′ AND `posts_table`.`ID` = `comments_table`.`comment_post_ID` AND (`spam_table`.`karma` IS NULL OR `spam_table`.`karma` >= -20) ORDER BY `display_priority` DESC, `comments_table`.`comment_date_gmt` DESC LIMIT 20
SQL error: Can’t create/write to file ‘/tmp/#sql_b08_0.MYI’ (Errcode: 13)
Seems like an SWL error, but everything else on the blog seems to work fine.
Thanks in advance.
Anthony said,
March 13, 2008 at 11:54 am
I meant to saw SQL error, not SWL (sorry - fat fingered)
john ford said,
April 6, 2008 at 4:44 am
hi, checking out your plugin. I get a…
“Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”
every time I try to post a comment. if I turn off the plugin, it works. any suggestions? thanks