Comments on: Tips to stop blog comment spam on WordPress blogs

By: Roland

Roland — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:38:23 +0000

FYI, Spam Karma is no longer being supported by the developer, according to his blog post: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/archives/2008/07/14...

By: Roland Reinhart

Roland Reinhart — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:12:54 +0000

Thanks for stopping by and catching that “enlargement” comment spam. As a habit I try to check my comments daily to make sure nothing obnoxious got past the automated defenses, but occasionally something does. It won’t last long though. As a matter of policy, I delete spammy comments so the other readers don’t have to get exposed to that garbage. Take care. -R

By: tyger

tyger — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:23:13 +0000

Great article. I’ve got Bad Behavior, Akismet and Referrer Karma running. Now that I’m done reading, I was thinking about heading over to that enlargement site I read about in the previous post, but I just went through that reduction surgery, so I’ll skip it for now.
Would spammers spam if it didn’t pay off? Someone must be clicking on all that crap and someone must be making money somewhere. It just seems like so much work to go through…..

By: Bobby

Bobby — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:51:12 +0000

SpamKarma2 did the Job for me better than akismet, which deletes comments even if they are not spam, and i couldnt figure it out how to moderate spam comments catched by akismet, so i recommend Spamkarma to everyone who has Problems with Spammers.

By: Roland

Roland — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:30:28 +0000

Thanks for stopping by. Installing “Bad Behavior” is an aggressive measure. Hopefully, legitimate visitors are not blocked.

But the reality is you have to evaluate the return on investment to you. How much is your time worth? How much stress can you tolerate?

Applying such a tactic frees up your time to concentrate on publishing good content. Manually combating the scum of the Web consumes your free time and adds unnecessary stress.

Good luck!

By: nytexan

nytexan — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:03:14 +0000

Thanks for the post, I found it very helpful. I do have a question that may seem very elementary but here it goes. Today I plugin Bad Behavior and I am concerned that it may be blocking some real visitors. I have been looking in the php log and many blocked entries seems real. How do I know if there are real people getting blocked. Thanks.

By: Florian

Florian — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 03:02:11 +0000

Hi,
I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day

By: Roland Reinhart

Roland Reinhart — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:41:26 +0000

Update: This is regarding my previous comment about Yahoo Site Explorer authentication abd temporarily deactivating the Bad Behavior plug-in. I submitted the problem/suggestion to Yahoo and a employee responded with this:

by employee Lakis | Sat Dec 30 00:06:44 2006
This will not work. We reauthenticate approximately once a week. So after a week, when we will re-authenticate your site, we will try to get the authentication file, fail and un-verify you.

By: Roland Reinhart

Roland Reinhart — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:46:52 +0000

WordPress users, maybe you’ll find this tip helpful.

I was setting up a new domain and Web site using WordPress and activated the “Bad Behavior” plug-in to block content spammers. But when I tried to submit the new URL to Yahoo Site Explorer, I kept getting “Unreachable URL” error message.

It was annoying because I knew the URL was resolving properly. Plus, I submitted the URL to Google Site Map and verified my site without a problem.

Here is the solution… Temporarily deactivate the “Bad Behavior” plug-in. Then go to Yahoo Site Explorer and submit the URL and feeds (it works!), put the Yahoo authentication file on the server. Then activate the Bad Behavior plug-in again when the site has been verified.

Hope you find this useful.

By: Roland Reinhart

Roland Reinhart — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 15:48:06 +0000

Hi, thanks for reading.
Fighting blog spam is a lot of trial and error. As I mentioned in the article above, try these steps:
* Regularly update the blog’s Comment Moderation filter with keywords you want to screen for and temporarily hold in a queue for your review.
* Regularly update the Comment Blacklist filter â€” extreme foul language or comment spam subjects like casino, prescription names (and misspelled versions), sex acts, etc.
* Temporarily block IP address ranges that repeatedly post spam over time. (Warning! Only advanced users should consider this extreme tactic.)
* Install a plug-in for your blog software that challenges the comment poster to either answer a math problem or type in the text displayed in an image. That helps slow down automated spambots.

All the above helped me a great deal.
Hope some of that helps you to. Good luck!
-Roland