Here is a Quick Way to Beat Comment Spam

Are you running a blog? If you’re using Wordpress or any other blog for that matter, you ought to have a couple of plugins running that go by the names of Akismet and Bad Behavior. Akismet works in a similar way to all those email programs that trap spam by spotting the patterns within the text and blocking those that match with known spam words and phrases. Bad Behavior looks for naughty spam bot type activity and blocks that before the bot can even complete the autofill of your comment form.

Just to add belt to braces and extra safety pins, you could have a captcha running too, which means your potential commenters have to fill in an extra line in the form to prove that they are human.

Unfortunately, for my installation on another site, Bad Behavior actually caused a few problems but I’m sure that was due to an inefficient Wordpress upgrade. It’s always advisable to do a complete WP file delete and re-upload (check the Wordpress site for more details on that). The captcha is great, but doesn’t stop all spambots, and it’s annoying to many users.

However, another caveat, Akismet is sometimes (not always) incompatible with the wp-contact-form plugin so you will have find an alternative PXS Mail Form is pretty good if you discover they don’t play nicely together.

I think the issue has something to do with the quick upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.0.7, which I referred to in a comment on the QuickOnlineTips blog earlier this month. I’d recommend not doing that quick upgrade from Wordpress 2.0.6 to 2.0.7 if you run Akismet with wp-contact-form, despite what the WP site recommends. A full install is the best way to go as you never know what little files and includes any one of your plugins might call. You can always download the latest version of Wordpress here.

Unfortunately, PXS Mail doesn’t have a captcha of its own, whereas wp-contact-form does, but now that Akismet is working properly, that’s not a problem.

Meanwhile, I found, via Lorelle’s Wordpress site a post on what to do if Bad Behavior blocks you from using your own site. She points out that it’s well worth following the advice on this, because it could be one of the reasons your posts aren’t appearing on other sites too!

Finally, as a special treat, here’s a nice little video from Roblimo.com explaining the benefits of Akismet. Take heed!