I have a hard time managing comments on my blog! There are a few popular posts, and I keep getting hundreds of spam comments everyday. Interestingly the blog features in top 5 results if you search for entrepreneur on Google.
I have used many anti spam strategies over the years. I used to manage comments by moderating them all when I started in August 2005. When that became too much, I opted for WP HashCash. WP HashCash puts in an encrypted key in each comment message and checks for its validity on submission. This allows browsers with JavaScript alone, leaving most of the spam bot attacks.
But somewhere the spammers got more intelligent and WP HashCash didn’t quite stop all the spam.
Tarique suggested moving to Akismet. So around September 2006 I did!
Around December 2006, Akismet couldn’t catch a lot of spam, but I lived with it. Over the last 1.5 years, Akismet stopped some 1,60,000 spam comments.
But then now, it was getting too much. A lot of purely spam comments were not detected by Akismet, and I had to find something else.
And I think I got the best solution to stop spam comments so far!
Math Comment Spam Protection + Simple Trackback Validation!
Essentially, the Match Comment plugin asks the users to enter sum of two digits on the comment posting form. We assume only humans can understand and answer this. Comment spam bots will not. So you get comments only from humans.
The Trackback validator checks the IP/Domain of all trackbacks you get, and also the page that generated the trackback. It checks for the link to your site / post and if found, marks it as valid comment. Everything else is spam.
I have Akismet on top of it, so if there are humans submitting spam comments, Akismet will catch that.
These three plugins combined, have stopped all spam comments! I now have zero spam!
There will be time when bots will become more intelligent and circumvent the current system. And then I will find something else!
What are your experiences with spam comments? What do you use to protect yourself?
Thanks for sharing this.
I use only Akismet on all my blogs and it’s been able to catch all the spam so far. But then my none of my blogs are anywhere near top 5 in Google 😉
Nirav, Hmm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find your blog with current Google team in first five pages 🙂 May be is it browser specific? All entrepreneur are using IE? 😉
Well, Are you using standalone installation or have got it using wordpress.com? Because, both can make major difference in result(s).
Also, how will you stop Spams when it is from Human 😛
I am on Firefox! The search term is “entrepreneur”! But anyways, that’s secondary.
I have a standalone installation of WordPress. May be they have better spam protection on wordpress.com! But this is what I have – like many others!
To stop spam from humans, you need humans to moderate comments 😉 Sometimes I let some seemingly marketing comments in, and delete the obvious promotions!