Spam comments!

[Torey and Kristen]

Hi! 

We’re having a terrible time with SPAM comments. Luckily, the filter we have catches a lot of them, but we still wake up to an email inbox filled with comments awaiting approval/spam flagging every day. Does anyone have a good wordpress plugin that can help?

-Torey & Kristen

http://www.wagworkwine.com 

[George the Duck & Typist Robyn]

Spam comments, oddly enough, are a good sign. It means your blog is being found.It’s annoying, though. Akismet is the best I’ve found for catching spam while seldom catching legitimate comments. 

[Jessica/YDWWYW/PetTalkMedia]

I use Akismet but do get an average of Spam comments every day caught in that box. I tend to look through them quickly because on occasion a legitimate comment has been caught in there. 99.8% of the time there isn’t though so if I am a real hurry I just delete them.

I know some people that use the Disquss comment system and they say it prevents spam (not sure how or if it also ends up in a spam box). “Anti-spam” is another plugin for WordPress but I have not used it.

I agree that more spam = more popular blog…or at least that is what I like to tell myself 🙂

[George the Duck & Typist Robyn]

I’ve had trouble with “Anti-Spam” catching quite a lot of legitimate comments while being no better than Akismet at catching spam.  

FWIW I use Disqus commenting system on a work blog and get spam there too. It does have more tweaks to blacklist, whitelist or allow only commenters of a certain rank, though. Might be worth a try, and it does have a WordPress plug in. I personally haven’t found it more effective, but I haven’t used it that long, and I do have all comments moderated for that particular blog.

If the spammers can find the blog, so can legitimate readers. Too bad there’s not a way to hide the blog from just the spammers!

Jessica/YDWWYW/PetTalkMedia said:

I use Akismet but do get an average of Spam comments every day caught in that box. I tend to look through them quickly because on occasion a legitimate comment has been caught in there. 99.8% of the time there isn’t though so if I am a real hurry I just delete them.

I know some people that use the Disquss comment system and they say it prevents spam (not sure how or if it also ends up in a spam box). “Anti-spam” is another plugin for WordPress but I have not used it.

I agree that more spam = more popular blog…or at least that is what I like to tell myself 🙂

[Stefanie Preston]

I use Disqus and have found it helpful to block certain words. I was getting so many spam messages for things like wedding dresses, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and other designer knock off sites that I decided to block those words. So if you ever leave me a comment and mention designer labels it might not get approved right away. 🙂

[George the Duck & Typist Robyn]

Excellent! I had a feeling there was something I was missing with Disqus. Hmmm May have to give that technique a try… at work or on blog or both. 🙂 Thanks!

Stefanie Preston said:

I use Disqus and have found it helpful to block certain words. I was getting so many spam messages for things like wedding dresses, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and other designer knock off sites that I decided to block those words. So if you ever leave me a comment and mention designer labels it might not get approved right away. 🙂

[Sharon Seltzer]

I had this problem too and it was driving me crazy.  I use WordPress for my blog and added a plug in called En Spam.  I found it on http://codex.wordpress.org/.  It was free, came highly rated and EASY to install.  I haven’t had a problem since and I find it automatically posts a user comment if you have approved it for a previous post.

Good luck.

[Dash]

I find Disqua frustrating and unfriendly, but find Akismet get a lot of comments. I think everyone gets a few a day. * sigh * These people spend their lives finding ways to comment but kudos to akisment it grabs most of them – If only people were not dumb enough to click through to the sites we would not get these issues.

I will check out En Spam as well. Thanks for the tip!

[Summer]

Spam comments have been bombarding me recently, however since I have backed off on social media for my blog, they seem to have stopped! Whether this is a coincidence or means something is alien to me, but I am much less annoyed now! Possibly the social media exposure boosted by blogs exposure too while I was at it. 

Disqus proved unhelpful to me in many fields, so I no longer bother with it. I have no reason to now I am lucky enough to receive 1, 2 or 0 spam comments a day, if I am unlucky enough!! 

[Paul Mather – Snowdog Guru]

Definitely install and configure Akismet plugin but also in the WordPress blog settings do the following:

Settings >> Discussion >> Hold a comment in the queue if it contains x links

I would set this number to 1. The majority of comments do not contain links and the majority of spam comments do. So this is a good way to keep the comment hidden from the live blog view.

Keeping spam comments, especially those that contain links out of the public view is important for a few reasons. 1. Users may click the links, which are often malwar riddled. 2. Search engines will frown upon your blog if it contains too many links to questionable sources.

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