Spammer posted so much I get HTTP 500 error trying to delete them

So I hadn't logged into my site for a few days and then when I did I discovered I had 5962 spam comments on my admin blog.  I tried to delete the user but get HTTP 500 server errors because the request apparently takes too long to complete.  Any suggestions?  How can I get rid of them?

  • When you delete an elgg user with a lot of contents, it will become problematic, because elgg will delete all contents, comments etc associated with that particular user (needs a long DB Query). So the better option is to remove some of the user contents first and then delete the user. When you have such a long list of contents, just write a plugin/a php code to get the blogs of the user (in multiples of 10 or 20)and hit the file using a cron at timed intervals. This will delete the junk posts and now you can remove the user

    The latest version of elgg 1.8, comes with an admin option to disable user registration. Also if you do a search here, there are plugins already available to stop registration, allow moderated registration, block users if they post multiple messages in X minutes etc..

    You can try the spam_login_filter by Ray J or the antispammer plugin from us available here. For the Db issue you had, try using the DBvalidator plugin from Cash.

  • I was using the webgalli spam filter, which I know has stopforumspam.com as the backend, but I will check out Ray J's, as well.  I did try the dbvalidator plugin which couldn't see the corruption.  However, my web host was able to help my correct it using the line command:  mysqlcheck -Aor

    For reference the attackers only registered three accounts, they were patient sending new posts every few minutes so it only built up over days without monitoring it and my firewalls missed it.  They also friended me as admin for some reason and clicked report this on thousands of items.  In other words, it seems like they were determined to destroy my site, but they failed once again.