The control of spammy comments has gotten tedious in recent times with Akismet lacking enough power to deal with the variation of spam comments that crop up each and every blessed day of the year.
Bloggers have seen a gradual rise in human spam comments as bot spam comments are getting too predictable and easily detectable by most anti-spam plug-in.
Not long ago, I made the decision to add another wordpress anti-spam plug-in to ginger up Akismet’s performance and I’m quite happy my choice was Wp-Spam Free.
Wp-Spam Free sticks out with these amazing functions.
- Blocks spammy comments both human and bot triggered.
- Eliminates the use of Captcha on the wordpress comment form.
- Comes with a contact form that also doesn’t require Captcha thus I got rid of Contact Form and Really Simple Captcha plug-in.
- Ability to add spammy commentator’s IP straight to your WordPress Comment Blacklist.
Steve of SteveoFC.com had previously complained about Wp-Spam Free @ Want comments? Disable WP-SpamFree. Apparently some folks were complaining of their comments not getting through and getting a message saying that their post looked "spammy".
Since no one had complained on my blog, I decided to enable the "Blocked Comment Logging Mode" to see if legitimate comments were getting deleted. After approximately 7days, I revised my comment log file to see that not a single legitimate comment had been deleted. ALL comments in the log file were spammy in nature. You can download my log file here (mht file) or here (txt file).
For the benefit of those of you who might have had the same issues as Steve, I’ve added captures of my Wp-Spam Free settings as the problem with folks complaining about comments not getting through could have to do with the plug-in’s configuration.
Have you ever used Wp-Spam Free? What has your experience been like? Do please feel free to leave a comment below.
If you’re a fan of this plug-in, do please support the cause by retweeting this post. Thanks.
For more tips on wordpress plug-ins, be sure to read the following posts:- Rescue Non-Spam Comments With Conditional CAPTCHA Whether we all agree or not, Akismet till dates remains the best anti-spam plug-in for Wordpress blogs. If you’re in doubt all you have to do is deactivate Akismet and try any other anti-spam plug-in on it’s own and you’d note a surge in spam like never before. Most Captcha...
- How To Drastically Reduce Spam Comments Some in the internet community have advised me to remove the NoFollow Free attribute from blog cos’ according to them that’s what attracts the spammers but if I thought if I did so I wouldn’t be able to reward my loyal commentators....
- Top 15 Wordpress Plug-ins @ StrictlyOnlineBiz Without the right tools, your days as a blogger could be numbered by certain factors. Below I’ve compiled my top 15 Wordpress plug-ins without which I’d be lost. Feel free to implement them on your own blog, if you haven’t done so...
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Please note that I don’t believe that any Anti-Spam plug-in is 100% foolproof.
Thanks for the heads-up about this plugin. I use Akismet but I think you’re right–I’ve seen more and more spammy comments making it through lately. Maybe I’ll have to give this plugin a try!
NOTE: Your URL was removed cos I couldn’t access your site @ the time of moderating this comment. I need to make sure your site is legit before accepting it. Please alert me when your site comes back online so I’ll fill in your URL. Cheers
I have only used Akismet and I don’t really know what algorithm they use, but many times I see some really good comments (and sometimes sales leads) in spam queue. I was excited about Mollom but looks like they are concentrating on Drupal only. Will try Wp-Spam-Free soon. Do they combine feedback from other bloggers like Akismet does?
‘that disclaimer and perpetual license clause is scary’
LMAO. Sorry about the clause. I’m just watching my back as s**t happens as the popular saying goes
P.S: I’m not so sure if they combine feedback from other bloggers. Hopefully if the authors of the plug-in drop by, they may be able to give a little insight into that
That’s great to here that this plugin is working for you. The problem i have right now is that i love to use third-party commenting systems like intensedebate and disqus. I’m basically at the mercy of them to help stop spam. FYI, intensedebate seems to have linked names dofollow by default, which doesn’t help my situation at all.
Josiah @Tumblr Themes hopes you will read…Dazzle(Ruby)
Try contacting the IntenseDebates creators to see if you could reactivate nofollow is that’s what you’re looking for
My host was apparently going through some updates, causing some outages. But my site is up and running (and should be, given no more ‘upgrades’)! Thanks.
Good to know the problem has been fixed. The links are back on
Great review of the plug-in, I get about 500 spam comments in 4 days in my spam folder and finding the 5-8 legit ones per day is very tedious, I will have to try this plug-in and mirror your settings.
Dragon Blogger hopes you will read…Verify your Google Buzz Account with Google Knol
500 spam comments in 4 days = Akismet being very lazy. lol. I hope my wp-spam settings do wonders for your blog.
Do please keep me posted and if possible monitor your blocked comments log for a week to make sure legitimate comments are not falling through the crack
My website was (and still is) being bombarded by spambots. I tried out WP-SpamFree, and thought it solved my problems until a couple of friends told me via Facebook that WP-SpamFree gave them errors and told them their sessions “could not be validated”. They had to leave my blog, and then come back again, before their comments could “take”.
I have currently disabled WP-SpamFree, and am now using NoSpamNX. Thus far, no complaints about errors or false positives from friends yet. I’ll do a write up once I am convinced NoSpamNX works better than WP-SpamFree on my site.
FoxTwo hopes you will read…WP-SpamFree Kicks Spam In The Butt!
Hmm, I really don’t know what to think or say right now. If Wp-Spam Free didn’t do a good job for you, why the post WP-SpamFree Kicks Spam In The Butt!?
That post was when I thought WP-SpamFree worked well. When I wrote the previous comment, I was in the midst of evaluating an alternate solution.
Now, I have decided that the alternate solution worked better for me, thus I am sticking with it.
However, it must be said that WP-SpamFree does work as advertised – it stopped 100% of spam-bot attempts. It’s just that users on my site may have experienced problems with it, and thus the reason for my change.
FoxTwo@foxtwo.org hopes you will read…NoSpamNX – Kicks Spam Comments In The Butt Differently!
Oh! So far so good I haven’t got complaints from anyone here. There’s a possibility you might have have disabled comments from those behind a proxy and that’s why they had problems commenting. That’s of course if they were really browsing behind a proxy.
Best of luck with NoSpamNX
Ultimately, the best way is to limit comments to members, and concentrate the spam control on user registrations. The SABRE plugin has helped me keep out all but the very determined nutters. The hard part is getting a really good, well followed, site established, so it’s best to relax the rules to start – i.e. allow non-member comments until you are popular enough to click the “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” box.
I simply rely on Akismet, which seems to work very well. Yes, I have a full spam box, but I’ve learned to ignore it, or ban persistent IP addresses.
Shrewdies hopes you will read…Comment on Simple:Press Forum Advertising by Keith from shrewdies
Ignoring a full spam box doesn’t really help much as there could be legitimate comments within but that would be a daunting task if one’s spam box is as full as yours.
Take note that shutting down guest comments after your blog becomes popular might backfire as those that helped make it popular might not be so willing to take the extra step of signing up before they can comment.
Just a thought.