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Spam Control within WordPress Blogs?

I have set up a blog using WordPress and it works well, though, unfortunately, it doesn't write itself. :-)

My question is two-fold. First, what do you use to set up your weblog, or what service do you use? And, second, is there any way to keep *##@ texas hold-em spammers from leaving comments without shutting off the comment feature? I haven't taken the time to research the support since I've been too lazy to dig, but it would be great if you had some solution.


Dave's Answer:

Well, I can't help you with the magic of having your blog write itself (though you might want to check out my teleseminar Exploding your Business with Blogging for lots of content generation strategies), but I can help with the tweaks and modifications to WordPress!

I admit, it can be a challenge to find the exact information that a blog owner needs when you're looking through the vast wordpress codex or support forums. Especially when you just want to get down to the business of writing your blog without having to learn every detail of how it works.

There are a lot of good tools for handling comment spam that wordpress.org links to through the codex in their Spam Tools area.

You'll note that they also show where to find tools that can help with trackback spam, email spam, any kind of spam that will arrive to your blog.

It really is a personal choice which comment spam tool to use. The better they get at keeping out spammers, the more they can annoy your human commenters. And some work better than others. No matter how well a spam filter works, it will not keep out a real person with off-subject comments (meaning you will still need to moderate your comments regularly).

The wordpress blog shown below is using a comment authorization plug-in from Scott Merrill to control spam (it requires that the commenter verify his email address and click on an emailed link to activate the comment).

When you choose one, you will often be redirected off of the wordpress.org website, to the developer's site to download the plug-in. As always, choose what you download carefully. If there are additional instructions, the plugin provider will let you know (on the page where you download the plug-in).

Choose one and download it to your machine. It will be zipped up, so you'll need to extract it and save it locally.

Then upload the extracted files to your wordpress blog. It goes in the wp-content/plugins folder. [If you don't already have a "plugins" folder in your "wp-content" folder, you can make one. There won't be one there if you've never installed another plugin.]

Here is an snapshot of above mentioned "comment authorization" plugin uploaded by FTP to a typical plugins folder.

WordPress Blog Plugin Upload: Spam Comment Authorization


Then log in to your blog and activate the plugin, in the plug-ins tab of your admin area - under the "Action" column. Most of the time, all you have to do for it to work is click "activate".

WordPress Blog Plugin: Spam Comment Authorization
Click on the image for a full-size view


Once you've activated the plugin, it will appear highlighted, like the "Cookie Timeout" plug-in in the above picture.

Wordpress is extremely extensible, allowing nearly unlimited plugins to extend your blog's capabilities. If you don't like one, you can deactivate it easily. Want to learn more? Check out the installing Plugins area of the WordPress documentation suite.

Good luck to you! Without some sort of comment spam management solution like this, running a blog can be quite an exercise in frustration!

Thanks to Desi for her help with producing this answer.


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Comments

All those comment spam extensions for blogs are great, but do remember that they do have their limitations. I personally use Movable Type and the built-in controls in version 3.2 are not very good. So, an option that can be used, though extreme, is to block specific IP addresses of known spammers from your server altogether. I know this can be harsh, but I found that I was receiving the majority close to 95% from 4 unique IP addresses. Since blocking those IPs, I have cut spam to a level not seen since comments were inactive. Again, this is extreme, but it is a solution if you find that nothing else is working for you no matter what blogging platform you use.

Posted by: Scott Goldblatt at December 21, 2005 10:08 AM

I'd also recommend the Akismet SPAM service (akismet.com). It's what the WordPress developers use on the hosted WordPress.com service, and works really well thus far. There are several plugins that utilize Akismet, including one from the developers themselves, so it should be incredibly simple to get setup.

Posted by: Chris Meller at December 28, 2005 7:54 AM

Another way which i know is Spam Filtering that can automatically stores email that is suspected to be spam in your 'held' folder for 2 weeks. You can go to your 'held' folder to release messages wrongly identified as spam.

Posted by: paper shredder at September 21, 2006 1:54 AM

I think they are now started to have spam karma which delete unwanted and spam comments.

Posted by: Fellowes at July 9, 2007 12:35 AM

I'll give this a go. I just logged on as admin after leaving my blog for the weekend and had 183 comments....160 by the same IP.

Posted by: Stephen at February 9, 2009 6:46 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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