A man can only take so many comments demanding that he enlarge his penis; who are these people and where are they getting this information from?! False information, that is… At any rate, nothing spoils my day more than comment spam. As a blogger, the most exciting part of the whole thing is seeing that little email saying, “You have a new comment!” And then, you know how debilitating and deflating and disappointing it is when you find out that it was spam; more often than not, one that makes a reference to your penis… Well my friends, the buck stops here!
The Solution to Spam
There is reason to have hope; as long as you use Wordpress (not that other blogging systems don’t have spam fighting add-ons; I just am not going to talk about them). There are a myriad of plugins that sport all kinds of spam fighting credentials. But after reading Derek’s entry on the matter, and doing some testing myself, I have found a combination of tools that work fairly well. Using the Akismet, Did You Pass Math? and Simple Spam Filter plugins, you can easily rid yourself of almost all of your spam problems.
Akismet
This little gem of a plugin is built into the Wordpress installation. All you need to do is activate the sucker. And seriously, if you haven’t done that yet, smack yourself on the head, then do it (I myself hadn’t activated the plugin for a while after starting my blog, so I had to smack myself…). When you receive a comment, it runs “hundreds” of tests on it to look for signs of spam. If it is good, the comment gets posted. If it is not, it gets filed as spam. If it is questionable, it puts the comment in your moderation line, so you yourself can determine its spaminess (tip: keep your eye out for anything about penises).
Did You Pass Math?
Next, this plugin can weed out a good number of bots. It will add a field where commentors type their info that asks a simple math question (along the lines of “What is 2+3?”). If the answer is blank or incorrect, it is spam that you have! That is really all there is to it. Again, installation is very simple. You download the plugin, upload it to your plugins directory, and then activate it. That’s all! By the way, the reason I don’t use it right now, is because I have compatibility issues with my commenting system; namely there are several other plugins that conflict with this one somehow. Either way, it is still a great plugin.
Simple Spam Filter
This bad boy plugin claims to block 90% of your spam right off the bat (just imagine how much you are blocking when using this in combination with the previous 2 tools). It acts as a pre-filter that immediately rejects spam comments before they are even sent into the Wordpress system. This actually saves your server some (minimal) work. You can even tweak the plugin yourself to add some more keywords that should be watched for.
Additional Spam Plugins
- AntiSpam: It’s a little code to ban some IP or domain. Very simple to use. Copy and paste the code in wp-config.php, and ban the unwanted IPs and/or domains.
- Spam Karma: Spam Karma works by running every new comment and trackback through a battery of filters and checks.
- Bad Behavior: Bad Behavior is a set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.
- WP-Gatekeeper: The point of Gatekeeper is to stymie spambots by requiring a commenter to answer a question that has an obvious answer.
Remember, techniques for spamming are constantly evolving, and there is no tool or even combination of tools that can catch 100% of your spam problems. Just keep your plugins updated and also watch out for newer, better solutions.
I’ve been using a CAPTCHA WP plugin that looks great, but unfortunately has been cracked by the spambots as I usually get 100 spam comments a day. Akisment keeps me sane, but I wouldn’t mind trying out the Math plugin you mentioned.
These are all great plug-ins. But I know everyone who owns a blog, MUST activate Akismet. I get many spam comments but Akismet blocks every single one of them from being published.
I used to have a spam captcha that asks commenters to answer a simple math question. However, I found out a few months later that because of the spam captcha, I no longer received trackbacks. So I immediately disabled it and now I’m only using Akismet to fight off spam.
Love this one ! Thanks really for the prompts on how to fight spam, it triggers me most when i see, you got 10-20 comments to approve and almost 1/4 of them are spam!
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I use Akismet and Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam CaptCha as the maths thingy, it once told me that 8 9 wasn’t equal to 17…
Which plugin you use to get this “read the rest of the post here”?
JD, u never told me if I could use your personal ‘this one’ modified template on my blog, or a 3 column version would even be better
You know me and columns…
Thanks as always!
Or am I just having bad luck that my template (quadruple blue) doesn’t support the quicktag (but then that should be hackable somewhere I would presume?)
Thanks!
@Julia – I know what you mean. It really sucks when you login to your WP Dashboard and find several comments awaiting moderation. You’re so eager to read the comments only to find out all are spam.
Great tips. To me, the most important thing is preventing it from going live since that provides a poor experience for users.
I agree Ed. But it is so hard to stop it. I only try to delete them as fast as possible…
I’m using akismet to block spams. I’ve used “did you pass math?” plugin before but unfortunately, many of my friends often forgot to type in the answer. Lol.
[...] spam free (or I take care of that as soon as possible), but that is only because of the wonderful spam filtering that I have. I still get to look at the kind of spam I get. And you know what? I think that my spam [...]
Akismet is my favorite by a long shot, it’s very customizable, fast and working great. Sometimes it also blocks legitimate comments but then you may find and recover them easily.
[...] than not, one that makes a reference to your penis Well my friends, the buck stops here source: How To Reduce Your Comment Spam, J David [...]
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.
Hello, very nice site, keep up good job!
Admin good, very good.
Akismet is my favorite program by a long shot, it’s very customizable, and fast artek iletisim
These are all great plug-ins. But I know everyone who owns a blog, MUST activate Akismet. I get many spam comments but Akismet blocks every single one of them from being published. yes you are right,and it is good article!