Interesting to see regular forum posts from bloggers who are still having problems with spam comments.
Personally, i rarely get spam comments that i have to deal with manually.
The main reason for this is that i have installed and setup an excellent plugin that stops over 99% of all spam comments.
Firstly, here’s my comment spam stats.
Best Anti Comment Spam Plugin
If you’re new to WordPress or haven’t installed Akismet, here’s a slideshow about how to setup this excellent anti comment spam plugin.
Otherwise, you may prefer a written tutorial on the same subject.
Still having problems with spam comments?
Native Discussion Settings
Try configuring your Discussion settings so all comments need to be approved before they’re posted.
This method works extremely well in conjunction with Akismet and should be all you need to wipe out most spam comments automatically.
Banning Specific Sources of Spam
Automated spam can be a real headache unless you know how to prevent it from happening in the first place.
If you’re find you’re getting heaps of spam bots from specific sources, learn how to easily block specific I.P address and countries.
Anti Spam Captcha
Installing and anti spam captcha is a last resort and will make it harder for genuine commentators to post quality comments.
If you need to, SI Captcha Anti Spam plugin is one of the most popular solutions.
More Anti Spam Captcha Plugins
There’s a couple of other anti spam captcha plugins which work well.
Captcha – This plugin produces a maths equation which needs to be answered before the comment is submitted.
WP Re Captcha – This plugin displays a captcha below your comment form which you can configure so its easy or hard to answer.
Remove Website URL From Comment Form
Add this code to the end of your child themes functions.php file and it will remove the website field from your comment form.
This code uses the WordPress comment_form_default_fields filter to modify and in this case remove the website url field from the comment form. It also uses the genesis_comment_form_args filter as well.
Remove Comment Form Allowed Tags
Removing the allowed tags from your comment form reduces spam bots which read the HTML in your source code that basically says you can add links in your comments.
Conclusion
Its rare that i get comment spam from spam bots because Akismet handles that type of automated spam very well.
The only problem i have on this blog is manual comment spam but its never caused me any real problems.
Stopping spam comments shouldn’t be a problem these days if you’ve installed Akismet and configured your discussion settings correctly.
How about you. Whats been your experience with spam comments? Ever had any problems worth discussing?