Spam Plugins Question

[ajwalsh]

What do you all use for your spam comment protection?

I currently have Akismet installed, so it catches all my spam and I don't have to worry about anything being displayed on my blog. But I still get hit very hard (20-50/day) and there have been a couple times when it blocked a legitimate comment or pingback...

What would happen if I installed a Captcha plugin as well? Would I still have to moderate comments that passed the Captcha test, or would they get automatically displayed on my blog?

Do multiple plugins work together? Should I do this?

I tried to search for this but it didn't seem to give me a good answer and a lot of the posts were very outdated...

[bkpkgene]

Originally Posted by ajwalsh

What do you all use for your spam comment protection?

I currently have Akismet installed, so it catches all my spam and I don't have to worry about anything being displayed on my blog. But I still get hit very hard (20-50/day) and there have been a couple times when it blocked a legitimate comment or pingback...

What would happen if I installed a Captcha plugin as well? Would I still have to moderate comments that passed the Captcha test, or would they get automatically displayed on my blog?

Do multiple plugins work together? Should I do this?

I tried to search for this but it didn't seem to give me a good answer and a lot of the posts were very outdated...

Unless you are you are willing to block entire ip ranges and countries at the firewall level, (which most bloggers and small site owners aren't going to be able to do due to shared hosting) there is nothing that you can do to keep spammers away from your blog. There are a number of things you can do at the .htaccess level if you really want to put effort into the issue.

Askimet is as good as it gets for blocking your WP comment spam (in my opinion). True, it does fail once in a while by blocking a legit comment or trackback, but remember, its designed to error on the side of caution if something about the comment or trackback catches its eye. I'd rather it flag something and let me have the ultimate decision then to flag someth8ing and it slipped past me. Remember, these plugins are the middle man between the submission form and WP. They have no idea how to identify prior to the clicking of the submit button if the comment is going to be spam.

This isn't directed at you in any way ajwalsh, but in many forums I visit, I am surprised to read posts from users who don't want to be bothered by the admin portion of running a site. They want to set it up, automate it and then not to come back and deal with it. Running a blog and/or site takes a lot of effort on the front end as well as the back end. Dealing with spam in today's world is just one of those evil things we have to do when we wear our admin hats.

[ajwalsh]

That's some good advice, thanks. You've brought a lot of knowledge to these forums lately, it's been great!

I know that there isn't going to be a way to completely eliminate spam. I guess the problem is that I'm getting hit much harder than usual this last week or so (like 50/day with the exact same porn message).

I usually at least go through and delete spam comments individually to make sure there isn't anything legitimate in there (I actually get more laughs than I'd like to admit.)

But now it's been impossible because these specific spam comments are filled with links and they are almost a page in length.

I guess I was specifically curious as to what would happen if I installed a captcha code for comments. Can multiple spam protection plugins work together? I'm really not sure how this works.

[bkpkgene]

Originally Posted by ajwalsh

I guess I was specifically curious as to what would happen if I installed a captcha code for comments. Can multiple spam protection plugins work together? I'm really not sure how this works.

Look through this list, there is probably something that should do the trick for you. WordPress › captcha Tags WordPress Plugins

[bkpkgene]

Originally Posted by ajwalsh

I guess I was specifically curious as to what would happen if I installed a captcha code for comments. Can multiple spam protection plugins work together? I'm really not sure how this works.

Try the WP plugin SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam