I’ve always disabled comments and pings/trackbacks on my WordPress blog because of spam. I’m not used to getting spam on my other websites – I don’t know is it because of Joomla? Most of my Joomla websites are spam-free and since my blog is the only WordPress installation that I have it kind of pisses me of a bit. Because on my Joomla websites I don’t use any plug-ins that help fight spam. Which is why I just told myself to screw it and disable both comments and pings/trackbacks instead of just enabling Akismet. However as more and more people tend to visit my blog I started to think that maybe some of them want to leave a real comment or a ping/trackback. And since I have both of them disabled then they can’t leave any comments or pings/trackbacks at all. Moreover I have comments set so that only registered users can leave a comment, then add the fact that I also disabled user registration for my blog…wow that totally leaves them with nothing hehehe. I want my website to be friendly to its visitors without the spam and so I’m going to enabled comments and pings/trackbacks again – And yes you don’t have to register to leave a comment. But then what about spam?
I enabled Akismet just to see how much spam I get everyday. It’s like my first brick wall to spammers. And then everytime I get a new spam that isn’t blocked by Akismet I’ll try to add another plug-in to help Akismet stop spam. It’s like a step-by-step process, now you probably want to tell me to just use them all at the same time. See the problem is I want to see how each plug-in reduces the amount of spam I get and how much of them still get through. And that’s the reason why I’m doing this.
So right now…I have the following plug-ins to help me fight spam.
- Akismet
I enabled it a few minutes ago and I already have a bunch of spam blocked already. That’s a good start! Now all I have to do is look for false-positives and some of the spams that go through. And if there’s still a lot of spam getting through, I’ll add some more WordPress plug-ins that help fight spam.
I also made a promise to myself that I will never do the following on my blog unless it’s absolutely necessary.
- Putting a Captcha plug-in.
- Comments will only be available to registered users.
- Modify the WordPress core files to help fight spam.
Now if you have any suggestions, feel free to tell me! I already have a set of plug-ins that I’ll put in my blog to help fight spam but then you’ll never know if I forgot a good one. So please let me know.
