July 7th, 2006

Handling Spam on WordPress

Part of the Handling Blog Spam SeriesHandling spam is probably one of the most basic tasks any blogger will have to handle, but in recent days, it is also one of the most important to get right (unless, of course, you want to drown in porn, drugs, and depression).

Luckily, for WordPress bloggers, there are only a few quick steps that have to be taken to ensure that you actually get time to write posts. There are also multiple alternatives you can choose from, some better than others. Here are a few of them. But if you dislike reading lists or just need the best anti-spam solution ASAP, you might want to jump to the conclusion.

One-Stop Plugins:
These are probably your best bet - whether you are a beginner or a blogging-since-1999 veteran. You’ll probably shave off 99% of all incoming spam through any one of these plugins:

  1. Akismet
    An anti-spam service with a plugin front-end. Since WordPress 2.0, Akismet comes bundled in. All you need to do (besides activating the plugin) is to get a WordPress API key. However, using Akismet alone probably isn’t the best you can do.
  2. Spam Karma 2
    A robust anti-spam plugin that integrates a variety of anti-spam sub-modules. Unlike Akismet, SK isn’t a hosted service, and does everything as a plain WordPress plugin. This means that you won’t have to worry about the anti-spam server breaking down or being DDOSed (which is possible, though unlikely, under Akismet). However, using Spam Karma alone isn’t the best you can do either.
  3. Bad Behaviour 2
    This is a highly effective set of scripts packaged in a WordPress plugin that can identify spam bots before they spam your blog. However, manual comment spam will still pass through. Nevertheless, this approach still nullifies a substantial percentage of comment spam most blogs will encounter while not requiring any reader involvement. Using BB2 alone, however, still isn’t the best anti-spam solution you can get (yep, I’m sure you’re tired of this phrase by now, but patience is a virtue…).
  4. Spam Karma 2 + Akismet
    This is probably the second best anti-spam method you can adopt for your blog at the moment. To implement this, you’ll have to install both Spam Karma 2 and Akismet, as well as a special SK2 plugin that somewhat integrates them both (link above). It is a bit of overkill though.
  5. Spam Karma 2 + Akismet + Bad Behaviour 2
    This is the ultimate anti-spam solution you can implement at the moment. It’s extreme overkill, and needs only to be implemented if you really have a major spam problem. To implement this, all you have to do is to install Spam Karma 2, Akismet, the SK2+Akismet integration plugin (the one right above this), as well as Bad Behaviour 2. No special plugin required to integrate BB2 with the rest.

Individual Plugins:
While individual plugins such as these can reasonably tackle large volumes of spam, they tend to have critical weaknesses that make them less attractive compared to the All-In-One plugins mentioned above. But if you are still interested, read on:

  1. CAPTCHA (an alternative plugin)
    These plugins force commenters to verify their “humanity” by identifying jumbled text displayed in an image. Highly effective against spam bots, but literally destroys your blog’s accessibility and usability as the vision-impaired can never verify themselves. It is thus not surprising that CAPTCHA is usually a last resort against comment spam. Also note that CAPTCHA cannot stop manual comment spam (i.e. determined spammers who answer your CAPTCHA just to push through a spam comment)
  2. Math Anti-Spam (an alternative plugin)
    These plugins force commenters to verify their “humanity” by answering a simple math question. While this system is more accessible compared to CAPTCHA, it still requires substantial involvement from your visitors.
  3. E-mail Comment Authorization
    These plugins force commenters to verify their “humanity” by clicking a link sent within an e-mail. Again, this method requires too much visitor involvement, and does not stop manual comment spamming.

Conclusion:
Get any one of the One-Stop solutions I’ve outlined above. For most WP users, using either Akismet or Spam Karma 2 alone (or a combination of both) will be sufficient. However, if your spam problem is really, really bad, you will have to consider using a combination of Akismet+SK2+Bad Behaviour 2.

This is all for now, but I’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive, so feel free to fill in the blanks. Thanks.

Edit: Changed a few titles, e.g. “All-In-One” to “One-Stop”, etc., for accuracy sake. Recategorised Bad Behavior 2 from Individual Plugins to One-Stop plugins due to its extreme effectiveness even when used alone. The ultimate spam solution was changed from SK2+Akismet to SK2+Akismet+BB2. Thanks to BB2’s creator, Michael Hampton, for pointing out what I had missed about BB2.

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Posted by ZMAng

Filed under Guides, Plugins, WordPress

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