There are many anti-spam plugins available on the net that you can use to prevent your website from getting/blocking more spams in comments or trackbacks. Some of them are working just fine and some of them are too strict which even blocking human visitors (there are two types of visitors, human and robots) from visiting your website. I’m sure many of WordPress users use Akismet (wiki) as their website spam protection because it comes in the installation package. But using Akismet alone is not enough. Why?
Akismet will check the comment entered and compare it with the database in Akismet web service. If it found that the comment is a spam, it will block and waiting you to decide whether to delete or de-marked it as spam. If you only use Akismet plugin, you will get about 10 or 30 (maybe more) spams caught in one day. And some of the comments maybe came from legit visitors comment or we can say good comments. Do you will use the all-delete button or you will analyze each comments one by one?
Here is the Akismet statistic that I pull out from Akismet stats page:
Total spam: 372,630,209
Total ham: 27,310,898
The total spams caught still increasing. And what we can do as Akismet user to slow down the increasing rate? To reduce these spams, you need to use some other plugins to help Akismet from doing so many jobs. I personally use Math Comment Spam Protection. This plugin will let visitors to answer math question and enter the correct answer before it stamp the comment into the database. If wrong number entered, you need to go back and learn some maths before you can give comments. Lol… :d After I use this plugin, spams caught by Akismet has been reduced to about 5 or 6 compared to if I don’t use, which always about 10 or 30 spams in a day.
If you don’t want use math comment protection, you can use another options of protection that we call it as Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) (wiki). The difference between Captcha and Math Protection is, you need to enter word or numbers displayed on the image created. If the word or numbers entered same with the image, Captcha will granted the comment as a good comment.
Example of WordPress plugin that using Captcha is Peterรขโฌโขs Custom Anti-Spam Plugin. I never use this plugin, so I don’t know how it performs. But based on Thilak post, it seems like this plugin is really good. And from my understanding, Captcha can also be use to reduce the spams in your Akismet.
As conclusion, don’t rely only on one protection. You need more to enhance the effectiveness of your spam guard. But using too much protection is not good. So use one or three plugins are already enough. Hope this helps. ๐ [tags]spam, guard, captcha, plugin[/tags]
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Very good post ๐ Very high traffic blog usually will have more than one protection and most of popular blog will on comment moderation by Admin. My blog traffic is still low and I think for now it is good enough with Akismet and Math Comment Spam Protection ๐
me either. akismet and math comment protection are fine. well my site also not really has high traffic. ๐
yes, it’s true, we need more that one anti-spam, i think anti spam like math comment spam and peter costum anti spam is better in filtering spam from comment. but i found that many spam are from trackback, i think i need to implement trackback filter in my blog next time ๐ฎ
Thanks for the trackback, but it was caught by Akismet too… Stupid Akismet isn’t learning
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i think akismet has feature to blcok trackbacks. ๐
[Comment ID #15317 Will Be Quoted Here]
it block my site? damn! ๐
Peter’s Anti-Spam is good. I followed Thilak’s suggestion, implemented it and got Peter to modify it as well ๐
@Thilak, switch to SK2 my friend!
yes..akismet block trackback….
but sometimes it go crazy…. hahaha 8-|
Right said man , am also feeling the need to use this math plugin .
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using math comment spam protection is already enough for me. and combine it with akismet is good combination of protection.
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yea dude. it sometimes block your’s comment in my website. :p
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sure. try it and tell me how it’s perform. ๐