Today, Ishan Sharma shares three simple and easy to implement methods of fighting spam without dragging your readers into the middle of it. Want to write for us? Read here.
Spam! We bloggers hate it! We end up wasting a lot time fighting spam. And many of us then take strong steps that affect user experience!
Doesn’t it feel irritating when your comment just disappears because a plugin marked it as spam incorrectly? Or, when you have to fill an unreadable CAPTCHA? How about when you are asked to register just because you want to comment on an article? Your readers may also get irritated if you use such measures!
In this post, I will discuss three easy methods that will help you in fighting spam without effecting user experience on your WordPress blog.
Comment Moderation
Many of us enable moderation to fight spam. While this is most effective way, it requires lot of time. Why not take this idea a step further?
Block comments on older posts
Go to Settings ? Discussion. Select “Automatically close comments on posts older than x days” (you can choose the number).
You can see this option in effect at ProBlogger, where after the post has been published for 90 days, the ability to comment turns off.
This idea may only want to be applied if your community is larger and gets a lot of spam as it completely cuts off discussion in older posts, which may hurt your community.
Set limit on amount of links posted
In the same area of your admin panel, edit the option that says “Hold a comment in the queue if it contains…” and change it to 1. Most of the time, spam bots will post more than one link at a time.
User Experience Pros & Cons
Not much change is noticed by the user by applying these simple option changes. However, if you do decided to turn comments off on older posts, newer readers who may have found your blog through search engines or an old referring link may not have the chance to participate in the topic discussion.
But on the brighter side, all the heavy link spam is taken care of automatically and spam on old posts is also blocked.
Anti-spam Plugins (Akismet Alternatives)
Next thing in the list is to get a good anti-spam plugin. Here are some good anti spam plugins that you can use (and no, you will not find Akismet in this list):
- Defensio: Defensio is a great alternative to Akismet. In fact, it is better than Akismet. First, from personal experience, I can say that it learns much better than Akismet. The comments marked as spam are listed as “Somewhat Spammy”, “Very Spammy” and “Obvious Spam” which makes filtering them easy.
- Raven’s Antispam: Raven’s antispam is another good plugin that can control most of spam left by bots. It shows a CAPTCHA only when JavaScript is turned off in visitor’s browser(usually, spam bots do not have it on).
- SI Captcha: SI Captcha can add a CAPTCHA on comments form and/or registration form. This prevents both spam comments as well as automated registrations.
I recommend using Defensio and Raven’s Antispam in combination as they can block virtually all spam. If you still get lot of spam comments, you can try out the very effective CAPTCHA option.
User Experience Pros & Cons
If you use Defensio and Raven’s combo, most of the readers will never see an “irritating” CAPTCHA. Also, for the owner (that’s you!), you will see far less spam comments and it will be easier to filter comments for you (with Defensio’s presentation).
The only negative side I can think of is that if you do use the CAPTCHA feature, it may be a turn off for some people to fill out as it just makes adding a comment more complicated.
Polishing the front end
Now, last thing to do is polish the front end a bit.
If you comment regularly on WordPress blogs, you must have noticed how WordPress behaves when your comment is marked as spam. You hit enter and tada – your comment just disappears! A very bad experience! isn’t it?
With the help of a small plugin WP AJAX Edit Comments, you can change this behavior. This plugin allows you to set a message that is shown to user if his/her comment is marked as spam.
Also, it lets your readers edit their comments for a fixed time (you can turn this off or change the time limit).
User Experience Pros & Cons
Readers know that their comments has been marked as spam and can contact you for rescue. Also, readers can correct spelling mistakes and typos. On the admin side, you can edit comments straight from front end and also mark/unmark as spam.
I cannot find anything negative to say about this approach, it works very well to improve the user experience while posting a comment.
Spam is nasty. Leave your readers out of the fight.
The three methods I just shared with you should make the experience of your readers on your blog a whole lot better. Now, you should see a less spam filled blog and a happier community
So, what other methods do you use and recommend to combat spam? Do not forget to share them via comments.
This was a guest post by Ishan Sharma. He blogs about Blogging Tips and Resources on Blogging With Success. If you liked this post, check out his post How To Sell A Dead Horse For $500!
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Thanks for the great tips!
I’ve also heard of this tip that you can use, though it’s not specific for blogs. Add an extra field to your form, and hide it with CSS. Most bots will fill out that hidden field. Then, just mark all comments that have that extra field filled in as spam.
Eric B.´s last blog ..What You Need (And Don’t Need) In Your Sidebar
There may be many problems with this approach! I have tried plugins that work on exact approach but they blocked even good commentators! One such plugin even blocked everyone from commenting!
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
Huh. I thought that there might be a few possible problems.
It also wouldn’t work in browsers like Dillo, which don’t support CSS. Or for Links (or other text-based browsers).
Eric B.´s last blog ..What You Need (And Don’t Need) In Your Sidebar
I will agree on that one Mr. I. I used some of the plugins here on my blog too to combat nasty spammers, but I am amazed and astounded to see that there are also noteworthy comments of my friends being tracked down as spams.
elmot´s last blog ..Stop Tweeting Political Stuffs, Bro. Seriously.
I leave the spam to akismet now. Before, i do comment moderation but it can disturb flow of the discussion in comment form.
Dana@Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Register Blog in Technorati Service
You should check Akismet at least once a day to make sure that no good comments are blocked by it. Having good comments blocked can hamper discussions more that moderation!
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
Very good tips. However, if you are getting few comments perday, I don’t think it is good idea to switch off commenting on 90 days old blogs. You can easily handle those by yourself. Also, akismet or defensio can help you to catch most of the obvious spams. However, if you are dealing with lots of comments, I think they are very good tips indeed. Thank you for sharing.
InternetHow Blog´s last blog ..How a simple taxi ride made me earn £110 per week?
Yes, for blogs with less than 10 comments per day, plugins and humans can easily take care of spam. But with a blog that gets more than 30-40 comments per day, mere humans and single plugin won’t do the job!
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
Great list. I have been thinking about closing comments on my old posts at ducedo.com since I receive 60-100 spam comments a day. It’s simply impossible to check them all to see if a valid comment slipped through and got marked as spam by Akismet.
Stefan´s last blog ..Organize Google Reader
Then go and do it. Most spam bots spam older posts. If you block comments there, at least half of the spam will be reduced!
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
I use Akismet and WP Spam Free together. No capchta is needed. I used to use a captach but it caused readers some problems so I dumped it.I’ve had no problem in the six month period of my blog. Very happy with it.
Gordie Rogers´s last blog ..Saturday Spew And Shout Out: October 10th 2009.
WP Spam Free is a good plugin. I have heard a lot about it. However, once a strange incident occurred with me. I installed it and tried to comment from WP dashboard. My comment was not expected and it even showed me a “Goodbye Spammer” message! After that, I have stopped using it.
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
Nice Post.
I actually never do anything against spam as Askimet always automatically removes spam. It makes life easier as I don’t have to keep on Approve or Disaprove comments.
So far I’ve probably reveiced like 40-50 spam comments and the best thing is that Askimet has automatically removed them. So I dont worry about spam anymore.
Teen Blogger´s last blog ..Where To Find Hot Sizzling Profitable Niches
I suggest regularly checking Akismet to make sure everything is fine. Even at 99% success rate, it can still miss a lot of spam comments and can delete good comments!
Mr. I´s last blog ..Do Your Comments Suck?
Another nice thing about Akismet is that anyone who actually checks their spam comments can help influence the future performance of it. I’ve found a few of my blogger friends in the spam pit, but after hand-approving a few comments they shouldn’t get caught by anyone’s Akismet in the future. Between that plugin and holding comments with links until the poster has made at least one approved post, very few comments actually survive filtering but they’re always the good ones.
John´s last blog ..Google Seems to Be Hiding Popular SideWiki Complaints
Okay, but I prefer comment moderation so the comments that showed up is very qualified.
Reza Winandar´s last blog ..5 Tips to Increase the Number of Subscribers for Beginner
I’ve found one of the best spam defences on my blog was to simply rename the Name, Email, Comment, etc fields to something that’s nonsense. It seems that 99% of spambots just look for fields called “comment” or “message” and post that.
For example, just looking at this page, your fields are called “author”, “email”, “url” and “comment”. By renaming them to garbage, you save a lot of processing on the server, because the spam bot doesn’t even try.
Are you referring to the id or value attribute of the input field? Or the Label field?
I’ve never used Akismet since I discovered WP Spam free plugin. The latter had me sleeping tight and worry-less even my blog is dofollow enabled. I hate CAPTCHAS so I don’t bother using it not even on my blog’s comment forms as the latter plugin also does the job fairly well.
Mathdelane ´s last blog ..Moving Ahead After Webhosting Hassles
We also switched to WP-SpamFree a few months ago for a bunch of our sites, and while it does a great job at filtering out 98% of the spam, some crafty spammers with nothing better to do continue to spam the heck out of one site, which we then have to delete manually.
Also, we’ve had reports of some readers who couldn’t leave legitmate comments.. It’s still worlds better than our old method (Akismet + Comment Moderation), but it seems like nothing is 100% foolproof.
Celebrity Seats´s last blog ..Phish Visits The Northeast This Fall
Legitimate commentators don’t hide in proxies and if you had that option checked in the settings, then there’s no way that they can submit their comment no matter what they do.
There’s really no perfect comment spam filtering plugin but getting at least a high percentage of filtered spam is something to be thankful enough.
Mathdelane´s last blog ..Keywordluv Abuse and No Follow Free on Do Follow Blogs
Useful post, a blogger will always hate comment spam except if you are a spam blogger yourself
“If you still get lot of spam comments, you can try out the very effective CAPTCHA option”. If you have a visual CAPTCHA on your blog, you are barring some of your visitors from commenting as visual captchas are impossible to solve for people using text-only web browsers, and may be impossible for people with low vision or similar learning disabilities.
Visual CAPTCHAs with audio alternatives are not perfect, but they’re a step in the right direction.
Web Hosting Blog´s last blog ..Cheap Web Site Hosting What to look for
Glad to see a blog post against spam where the author doen’t recomment captchas…captchas are probably one of the best way to loose commentators!
Jean-Baptiste Jung´s last blog ..10 tips to be an efficient guest blogger
This may be ironic spam, because I might be your 5000th comment.
Logan Graham´s last blog ..logangraham: just joined a video chat at http://tinychat.com/socialmediaexaminer Make your own video chat at http://tinychat.com #tinychat
For wordpress user it is easy..
Just use akismet.. I don’t like comment moderation, limit or words verification because as a commentar I won’t comment if strict on the comment blog.
It is unbelieveable but SPAM is just one way to make money online using unethical method.. To fight SPAM ain’t easy because it will still exist.. It is a potential way to get customer..
Maybe you can share at my blog.. I’ve write about it..
Hi
i think some people like comment moderation but I think this may be not good for web masters.
yeah.. I agree with you
Blogger Ingusan´s last blog ..Make Money Online is Possible but Not Easy!
Providing Akismet’s effectives and Pros and Cons of each feature mentioned are the Pro’s of this post.
Senthil Ramesh´s last blog ..Proven Ways to Encourage Comments in your blog Part II
Thanks for this post ‘cos I found myself slightly annoyed with WP-SpamFree. Why? Because my ISP enables a proxy on their end(in accordance with Singapore’s censorship regulations, ALL the local ISPs must set up a proxy on their end, which can never be disabled by the user). So, I was forced to disable the proxy option but I wasn’t very happy with doing so.
This hasn’t been the first time I’ve found myself treated as a spammer by a setting, though. It’s extremely annoying whenever forums and blogs end up blocking an entire country just because of some darn-fangled anti-proxy settings. But whatever, I can always go to places which treat me like a human.
Since I dont have many comments, I dont find it taxing to moderate comments.
scheng1´s last blog ..How to make money from writing online
I appreciate the advice. I am going to try a couple of these plugins. I have always used akismet because that is what is there by default, but it sounds like the others work better, Thanks for the info. Glenn
Glenn@Very Cheap Web Hosting´s last blog ..Cheap Domain Name And Web Hosting
Spams are a problem no doubt and maybe there are no sure ways to beat it. Facing the same problems too. Although it takes time, I check the comments manually.
I feel that blocking comments from old post is not such a good idea. As the article said, new comers cannot add their say to the topic and participate. “WP AJAX Edit Comments” seems to be one of the best ways as it allows editing and is more flexible.
For Bloggers Who want to Stop Writers’ Block
I’ve been using Akismet since I started my blog about a month ago. I used to get over 100 spams per day. Now I only receive less than 15 a day. However, I must point out that none of my readers ever saw these spams though; in my WordPress control panel, I checked off “An administrator must always approve the comment.” This prevents your readers from seeing those spams.
I went a step further to combat the spams, by blocking the 2 IP addresses that I believed were the main contributors of spam to my blog. Wow! That helped a lot.
I can not believe there are not better methods for comment spam blocking than what is available right now. With this being such an HUGE problem, it seems like someone would develop a solution that is fool proof and retire rich.
Randy V.´s last blog ..Glass Bottle Crusher for a Bar
Very informative post, I learned a lot. I also see that I have much more to learn and will be back for more learning soon. I have noticed that akismet seems to catch a lot of comments it lists as spam, but they do not really look like spam to my uneducated eyes.
I have written down the two plugins you recommend and will be checking them out.
My biggest problems is know what is spam and what isn’t?
I wish the people who comment on my two blogs would actually take the time to read a post and/or comment on a topic they read about.
Thank you for your great site, I will be taking notes after I post this comment.
Great Work!
I like your most important information to stop spamming in blogs. In my blog i do “no follow” to every comment & after 3 months i block the comment on post but in your post i find other good options for protect the blog from spamming.
Thanks for sharing this most important information which is more useful for every webmaster.
Hi, I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the great work Look forward to reading more from you in the future. Jenni.
Akismet is a pain. You can have good legit comments put into the spam category. Also, the person would have a very hard time commenting which gives the user a very bad experience.
The unreadable CAPTCHAs are the worst. One time, I tried filling one out over 7 times before I got it right.
-Kai
Very useful blogpost. I used most of these points in my blog, say nearly I have got 4 options in my blog which you have mentioned here. The only thing that I missed out was “back to top link” button. Will keep that button in my blog right away to make it tidy and easier navigation for my users.
Interesting information may be requested. Thank you!
i think you are right but i need some help many of the spam plugins have false positive spam results is there any way to prevent that esp in akismit.thank you.
haytham´s last blog ..Atahualpa wordpress theme download
Since I recently installed CommentLuv on my blog, Akismet catches it as spam since it contains their postback in the actual comment. I could just set the link limit to two. Do you think this is the optimal solution?
Victor´s last blog ..Broiled Lobster Tails
I recently turned my blog to do follow several months ago. I immediately noticed a large increase in spam bot comments. I already had akismet and it worked well, however I always felt compelled to look through the caught spam to make sure there were no false positives. This quickly became a big time waster as well.
So I added a plugin called wp-spam free and it works in combination with akismet. Now the spam comments never even get to me so I am not compelled to look at them. When I first installed the new plugin, I logged the caught spam to spot check for false positives. I never found one, so now I don’t even worry about it or even log the spam comments.
So far only an occasional spammer will get through with a generic comment, but none of the spam bots ever do.
Damon Day´s last blog ..New Era Debt Solutions Review