My server is being hit by attempts to submit trackback spam which is particulary annoying as I don't have trackback. By default Drupal formats up a full web page with a fancy 'page not found' line for a 404 error (page not found). To save server time and bandwidth, I've put this at the top of my .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 403 /fail.html
Fail.html is a minimal html file containing just the string '403 error'. Should be little enough load for the server:
<header> <title>Error</title> </header> <body> Error 403 </body>
This is added to the mod_rewrite rules:
# # Reject any attempt to submit trackback spam # RewriteRule ^(.*)trackback(.*)$ - [F]
any url with 'trackback' in it is rejected with the minimal 403 error.
Peter's Moblog
