A QUESTION
Are there any bloggers out there using WordPress – I know there are – who have found a functioning, easy to install plug-in for comment spam?
The one that I've been using is essentially worthless and I've been told that there don't seem to be any products out there that work well with WordPress. Since this is an area that is so problematic for many bloggers I find it hard to fathom that a shitty service like Google's Blogger could have an anti-comment spam device that actually works while a gorgeous product like WordPress is incapable of handling such a need.
If any of you have easy suggestions for someone who is severely tech challenged please feel free to post away in my comment section.
Scott
——-UPDATE——-
I should have been a bit clearer – a common problem with me – I'm currently running Akismet and its caught about 2,000 bits of comment spam in the past couple of months so it's definitely doing it's job. The problem is we installed an additional comment spam thingy – one of those question plug-ins that you need to be a real live person and do a math problem in order to post a comment and the spammers are getting past that at the rate of over a hundred and fifty or more a day which Akismet is then dutifully catching. It would be nice however, to not have to go through a hundred or more comment spams a day to delete if I can find something that will work to keep most of it out.
A while back we had an anti spam thing much like that employed by Blogger where you re-type the words and letters that you see in a field but for some strange reason that was not allowing people to post comments even when they did it correctly.
One would think that this would be an easy fix but per Robert from Brave Creatures and who designed this blog such is not the case.
March 4th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Me and my partner both have blogs (he actually has several) and they are all on wordpress. We use spam karma on all of them to handle the comment spam and it seems to work pretty well. There have been a few occasions where a spam comment has managed to make it through and the rare occasion when a legitimate comment has been flagged as spam but overall it has been VERY effective and works quite well.
March 4th, 2007 at 7:51 am
What are you using for your spam blocker? I have a wordpress.com blog and am using the built in Akismet spam protector. It has been quite good at protecting me from spam comments. I just this past week moved to a self hosted site, and am still using akismet. So far I've only gotten one… but if it works as well as the wordpress free sites, then I would recommend it. You need to register an account with wordpress.com to get a registration number to use it with you self hosted site.
March 4th, 2007 at 8:00 am
WordPress comes with the Akismet plugin which is excellent for catching comment spam. It's caught over 800k for me. You'll need an API key to activate it fully, which you can get by creating an account at wordpress.com.
March 4th, 2007 at 11:22 am
I've been using a captcha from Protect Web Form for several months on my various guestbooks/comments pages and it stops the spam bots. They have a Wordpress plugin that may work for you. http://www.protectwebform.com/plugin_wordpress
March 4th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Ok, regarding your update – when I was having major comment spam issues, I ran both Spam Karma AND Akismet and the very few that Akismet didn't catch, Spam Karma did. Maybe those two along with the question thingie would work better? If not, then all I can suggest is hunting out more plugins, and layering your anti-comment-spams even more.
March 4th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I use word press (.com) and I also use Akismet. And it works very well. 1272 spam messages later, recently, I got a few spams in the comment que! But that is rare. I think the more barriers you put up in your comment field, the more hackers know to get past them. I have ticked in my blog specifics that all comments must be moderated. In the settings area you can tweak the specifics. I notice that my comments always disappear after I post them here and they must go to your que. I never know if they are accepted or not, and sometimes I send in two sets to make sure at least one of them makes it through. Word Press is good at what they do, if you are having problems then maybe email Matt and see what he can tell you. Then again, your content may tag you as "mature" and that happens to some of our blogs. let us know what happens. Jeremy