Spam from Wordpress Blogs - any solutions?

[jbmunchie]

Hi guys,

I'm getting TONS of spam, both drug co and adult site garbage, on my Wordpress site. Of course I have it set up to approve all posts first, but I'm wasting way too much time going through it all.

Is there a way to keep these spam postings away from my blog?

Appreciate any suggestions....

Jana

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Are you using Akismet? That gets the vast majority of the spam comments on my blogs.

[bgmacaw]

Use Akismet and a non-intrusive anti-spam plugin and this automated spam will go away.

[jbmunchie]

Nope, it's not one of the plugins I have. Do you know where I can get it?

[J smith]

Good timing for this thread as my own wp site just got hit with some 20 spam comments all at once. But the akismet plug in asks for an API key. Where/how would you get an API key for a self hosted wp blog? (Seems the help section it sends you to only talks about wordpress.com wp blogs)

[Stefan Vee]

The Askimet plugin is what you need but does require a free API key.
Go to --> en.wordpress.com/signup/ (a username-account is all you need - see bottom)
The API key will be in your welcome email, and you can use that key for more than one blog.

[NickL]

Go here to get started with a WordPress API key: API Keys WordPress.com

[Christoph Eicken]

As an alternative you can use WP-SpamFree - works great for me:

"An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well."

I am not allowed to post links yet but just go to the pugins section at wordpress.org and look for "wp-spamfree"

[John Collins]

Hi Jana -

I use Akismet and it works great but you will still need to check or delete all the spam it collects.

To eliminate that I added a captcha plugin SI Captcha. I picked that one because it had easy images to read.

I was getting hit heavy with spam. Up to 50 a hour. I still had to take the time to go into Akismet and check to see if there were any valid comments that got flagged. This can happen and Akismet says it learns over time. It was still taking up a lot of time.

After I added SI Captcha only a few get into Akismet and they are usually just a pingback. I very happy with the results using both together.

You can get SI Captcha here it's free -

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...for-wordpress/

Get Akismet here - http://akismet.com/

Get the free version.

Get your API key for Akismet here by just creating an account at - http://wordpress.com/

After you sign up and log in. Look in the upper left you will see My Account which is a drop menu. Select - Edit Profile

The very first line of text on the page has your API key you need for Akismet.

This API key is also used for WordPress.com Stats you can get it here -

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

[Craig Desorcy]

do this too:

Create and add a robots.txt to your main directory where your wordpress files sit.

If your blog sites in your root folder (www) put it in there.
In the robots.txt add

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/



Craig

[jjpmarketing]

Does that prevent direct browsing to those folders?

Quickest method to prevent spam is combine akismet with a captcha plugin. This should eliminate most of your problems.

Dennis

[Abledragon]

Akismet definitely, but I also use the Bad Behaviour plugin in conjunction with Akismet.

I've found it to be extremely effective. If I get 2 spam comments a week I'm surprised - and they're always sitting in my spam comments folder, rather than on the posts.

Cheers,

Martin.

[sylviad]

Another vote for Akismet - it found around 16,000 spam comments last time I looked. You still get some, but those are easy to just delete.

Of course you could always just turn off the capability to add comments, if that's an option that would work for you.

Sylvia.

[optimuswarrior]

Originally Posted by NickL

Go here to get started with a WordPress API key: API Keys WordPress.com

cool, what if I can't remember what my account details are?

[optimuswarrior]

Originally Posted by jjpmarketing

Does that prevent direct browsing to those folders?

Quickest method to prevent spam is combine akismet with a captcha plugin. This should eliminate most of your problems.

Dennis

the captcha, good idea. and monitoring the 'spam' comments for false positives I guess.

[jjpmarketing]

Akismet really helps. I think I had a bot get a hold of my blog address or something. For a while Akismet kept blocking dozens of spam daily that was just one big long list of links.

I also put full moderation on my comments. I have it set so if a single link shows in the post, I have to approve the comment.

Dennis

[stevenh512]

Originally Posted by jbmunchie

Nope, it's not one of the plugins I have. Do you know where I can get it?

Akismet comes packaged with Wordpress, so you should already have it unless you deleted it by mistake. In that case you should be able to go to wordpress.org and find it in the plugin repository. Either way, you'll need a wordpress.com API key but that doesn't cost anything and should only take a few minutes to set up.

To keep the spam off of my Wordpress blogs I use Akismet and the ReCaptcha plugin. The ReCaptcha plugin also requires a free API key from recaptcha.net but again it only takes a few minutes to set up.

[Ron Killian]

Math Comment Spam Protection plugin stopped them cold for me. Have to answer a simple math Question before a comment can be submitted successfully, like "What is 5 + 3?". Works great.

[jjpmarketing]

Providing your commenters know how to add. Design a plugin that has them factoring algebraic equations... that'll stop spam dead in its tracks. In fact you may never have to worry about comments at all... lol

[Quentin]

The best way to reduce spam is to add a simple capture code to your posts so they have to fill in the capture before they can post. This reduces spam which comes in via bots which most spam gets posted with.

Akismet etc is good but it does not stop the spam but filters it out so it still gets posted.

The captua stops 99% of this.

Just do a search for captua plugin.

Here is a sample showing the latest updates to Google

New Google Tool for Finding Niches! | The Internet Marketers Club

I use this plugin.

WordPress › SI CAPTCHA for Wordpress WordPress Plugins

Quentin

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Ron Killian

Math Comment Spam Protection plugin stopped them cold for me. Have to answer a simple math Question before a comment can be submitted successfully, like "What is 5 + 3?". Works great.

Intrusive solution unfortunately. You can use other plugins that fool the auto-comment-bots but humans don't notice.

[Sam Kern]

You really need to get rid of those spam comments before they plague your blog.

Besides akismet, here are few things you could do

1. Remove comment feature temporarily until you do a good cleanup

2. Also install All Spam free wordpress plugin

3. Install Recaptcha wordpress plugin

[Ron Killian]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Intrusive solution unfortunately. You can use other plugins that fool the auto-comment-bots but humans don't notice.

If you know of a better solution, why not tell us? You hint at better options, but you don't say what they are.

[jbmunchie]

Ok, any ideas? I installed spam-free & Akismet, activated it and now I can't get to my blog page. It doesn't give me any opportunity to sign in or anything, it's just giving me a HTTP 403 page. I can't get to anything now...
I downloaded the current Wordpress version, and still can't get to anything. Lovely.

[runfast]

Thanks everyone for the Akismet information. I been procrastinating on getting this done on my WP articles.

[Ron Killian]

Originally Posted by jbmunchie

Ok, any ideas? I installed spam-free & Akismet, activated it and now I can't get to my blog page. It doesn't give me any opportunity to sign in or anything, it's just giving me a HTTP 403 page. I can't get to anything now...
I downloaded the current Wordpress version, and still can't get to anything. Lovely.

I'd first delete the Akisment plug-in and it's files with FTP, or even file manager in control panel, if you have that. Doing that should at least get your blog up and running again. Then go from there. I have no clue myself why it would stop your blog from loading. Seems the plugin is hanging up or stall for some reason.

[John Collins]

Hi Jana -

If you use a ftp to upload the plugins you should be able to us it to go where you placed them and delete them. This will remove any control the have if they are the problem. You then should be able to login again.

If you used the file manager in cpanel you can do the same.

It's been a while since you mentioned you installed it and got the 403 error. Have you tried deleting the 2 plugins you just installed via FTP or file manager in cpanel.

It sounds like you were thinking of installing a new version of WP as a solution. I recommend you fix the current problem first.

Sounds more like a directory or permissions issue.

[peterlog]

download akismet plugins. and make sure you've got all the updates with your wordpress

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Ron Killian

If you know of a better solution, why not tell us? You hint at better options, but you don't say what they are.

There are several available and I don't have one I favor over the other. Two I use from time to time that are still being maintained are...

WP-SpamFree

WP-HashCash

There are some others, such as SpamKarma, that were good but are no longer being maintained so I don't recommend them.

[peterlogins101]

be sure you have the full security for your site so that you wouldn't be a victim of those spammers who just want to hi-jack your site contents and traffic.

[ashishthakkar]

Best solution for this is Akismet.

I have it on all my blogs except 1.

The last one i removed the whole block where you can go and comment

Best of luck.


regards,
ASHISH THAKKAR