Well, for x-mas I got an amazing amount of comment spam. And the best part is that it doesn’t even advertise for anything. I recently renamed my wp-comments-post.php file to try and cut back on the comment spam I was getting, and it was working until today. The worst part is that the spam isn’t even advertising anything, it’s just random characters and random names, so I can’t filter it at all. It’s like someone just wants to annoy me.
So not cool.
Anyone have new suggestions on how to cut back on the spam? I’d like to implement a forced preview for my comments anyway, so maybe there are new WordPress plugins out since the last time I checked a few weeks ago that can help me out?
That sucks. I thought that renaming the wp-comments-post.php file was a pretty good solution. (It’s been working fine for me on one of the blogs that I maintain.)
They must have a spider that’s just searching for a “form” tag and submitting it. I wonder if renaming the input field names would work?
Hey me too! It turns out there is a few good plugins. Check out spam stopgap extreme I’m trying it out. Hopefully it works.
Excellent… I just installed it – let’s see if it works.
It’s not working. I still got a bunch of the random comments over night.
Have you tried either Kitten’s Spaminator or Spam karma. They both work on the principle of rating the comment’s content then giving it a score. Anything thought to be spam is sent to be moderated.
I use Kitten’s Spaminator and it’s worked great. Spam karma is more comprehensive, more options to fiddle with.
As for the ramdom text spam, I’ve heard rumors that it’s designed to reduce spam filter accuracy, a sort of pre-spam offensive.
My last comment post didn’t appear on the page. I’m assuming it was caught by a s p a m filter for saying that word too much.
My idea was to use either spam karme or kitten’s spaminator.
Your comment got caught because it had too many links. I think I have it set to two or three links and it will hold it for approval.
So far the ‘Spam stopgap extreme’ isn’t working. I’ve closed off most of my old posts that don’t need comments open anyway, but they keep finding others that are still open and posting to those.
Thanks for the tips on the other spam catchers, I’ll check them out.
Do you really care what we have to say? My solution was to take comments off of my site, but that’s because I was dealing with a bunch of 11 year olds. Carrie sucks balls!
How about one of those “Type the numbers/letters in the image” type of things?
Yeah I don’t have a problem closing most of the posts, but there are a few that I need to have feedback on, like the FlashObject post, and a few others where some good discussion has popped up.
And I hate those number entry things. They just piss me off and I think they are terrible for usability. Maybe a big site like ebay needs them, but it’s definitely not for me.
I use an email verification system I found here… http://www.skippy.net/blog/2004/04/27/plugin-comment-authorization/
It forces the person commenting to use a valid email address, or the comment wont post. I do still get lot’s of attempts though. I have to goin and delete them from my moderation page. I too am considering removing the ability to comment. Spammers Suck!
If your spam problem is user-hand-submitted, Spam stopgap extreme cannot do anything about it. All it attempts to do is resist robots!
Three rules for the spam game:
1) you can not win.
2) you can not draw.
3) you can not leave the play.
Greetings,
Antonio, from Malaga (Spain)