Blocking spam on Wordpress
There are three main ways to block comment spam on Wordpress blogs:
- The built-in Akismet plugin. You need to obtain an API key. See here how to use it. I don’t use it as I don’t like to depend on others.
It is also known to generate false positives (marking legitimate comments as spam) and slowing down the comment system. - Some kind of CAPTCHA plugin. It is basically a image containing random generated text that the user must enter in a form when posting the comment. It is very efficient, but it may reduce a little the number of people commenting on your blog.
- And the third method, which I think is the best one for small blogs. It uses just built-in Wordpress functions. Here’s what I’m talking about:
- go the control panel on your Wordpress blog
- open Options - Discussion
- make sure that both options from Email me whenever are checked so you’ll receive and email every time a comment is posted
- scroll down to Comment Moderation and write after Hold a comment in the queue if it contains the maximum number of links a comment may contain before it is automatically hold in the moderation queue. I use one, so that every comment containing links must be manually approved
- in the next text area write keywords common in the spam comments together with IP addresses and nick names used by spambots. You’ll need to modify this list based on spam comments that pass this filter. Here’s the list of the keywords I use at the moment:
xanax
buy
cheap
purchase
ephedra
prescription
overdose
recall
pill
cymbalta
diazepam
dosage
erection
<strong>
sale
doodee
Bonus: I haven’t tested this plugin, but it looks interesting.