Beat Wordpress spam with two plugins

I love Wordpress. It’s designer-friendly, easy-to-use, and free. What I hate is managing spam.

I have two pet peeves when it comes to preventing spam:

1. I’m lazy and don’t want to moderate every single comment.
2. Making readers enter CAPTCHA letters is annoying and just isn’t cool.

Fortunately, here’s two plug-ins for worry-free and unobtrusive spam control:

Akismet

Both a service and a plugin, Akismet eliminates spam by running hundreds of tests on every comment and checking it against a database of known spammers. It’s built-in with every Wordpress installation, but you’ll need to register for free API key to activate it.

Once activated, it’s virtually worry-free. No need to maintain blacklists or cumbersome moderation rules.

Moderate Brief Comments (The best little-known plug-in ever)

Akismet isn’t perfect. It sometimes misses spam comments containing very few words. For example, a 3-word spam comments such as “discount viagra anvenve” can pass through unflagged.

I searched endlessly for a plug-in to check the number of words in a comment, and send those that are too short into the moderation queue. No luck.

Before giving up, I posted my dilemma on the Wordpress forums. Within a day, moderator Kaf Oseo (Kafkaesqui) wrote a plug-in and posted it. This is why I love the Wordpress community!

Download Moderate Brief Comments
View instructions

Besides spam, the plugin’s also useful for eliminating lame short comments such as “Hey, thanks” or “Keep up the good work.”

After installing and activating both plug-ins, LifeClever is now virtually spam-free. If your blog allows readers to receive comment notifications via email, this also means less spam in their inbox.