Chanpory Rith
Nov 13, 2006
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:
- I’m lazy and don’t want to moderate every single comment.
- 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.
16 Comments
Abby
9:23 am
Cool! My last comment on that board was ignored indefinitely. :(
Abby
9:36 am
Wait. I have the API key. Where do I enter it. Into the code?
Chanpory
9:47 am
Hey Abby, sorry to hear your post in the Wordpress forums was ignored. Perhaps I lucked out.
You can find the instructions for setting up Akismet here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Akismet
Here’s the part about activating the plugin:
“Now, go to your other site’s Plugins > Akismet Configuration page in your admin panel. Then, enter your WordPress.com API key into the text box (copying and pasting is a good way), and click on the “Update API Key” button.”
Hope that helps!
Abby
9:53 am
Ah! I’d already installed and activated it. I just didn’t see the “box below the main navigation saying that the Akismet plugin is not active” since it appeared above the plugin list, not below. Maybe that’s because of the version of Wordpress I’m using or something. All better now. Set it up on my and my dad’s blogs.
Torley
6:30 pm
Oooh cool! I don’t think “Moderate Brief Comments” would do me much good, as I appear to get many comments which are quite lengthy and URL-laden. Akismet is great, tho. :)
Joshua Kaufman
5:06 am
Does anyone know of a plugin similar to Moderate Brief Comments for Movable Type?
Kim Siever
8:49 am
You should also take a look at “Bad Behavior”. It automatically deletes spam, making the job of Akismet less of a chore.
Torley
10:00 am
Kewl Kim, I’d like to check that out… after I get my Akismet trained well-enough!
Sigurdur Armannsson
1:00 pm
I wonder if Moderate Brief Comments has a counter or log. Or something I could count the number of post it deals with compared to Akismet.
I have gotten about 20-30 comments into the moderation each day for the last three or so months. Akismet has grabbed 4 since this morning after I read this article and finally installed both plugs. So I wonder, where are the other 20 somthing? hmmm… not that I want it badly.
Btw. I very often think developers forget that they are making stuff for people who don’t read minds on daily basis. Like for Akismet. It says that you should paste this little piece of text into your WP template. There are 15 or so templates. I, who don’t read mind either found at last a web page that managed to say: Put it where you want it to appear. So I picked the sidebar. I could continue forever…
Thanks for pointing out these great plug-ins. I wander why I installed it after reading this article. I have known about Akismet for some time and downloaded it at least twice.
Jason Alba
5:03 pm
great post - I thought CAPTCHA would solve all my problems but I got e-mails from users trying to post who couldn’t see the letters very well :( We took it off and installed Akismet and so far so good! Well, my first comment (that I wrote) was sent to the spam bucket, but aside from that it has been awesome!
DT
8:46 pm
I use Akismet to great effect, and it keeps my blog spam free. Though often i do look into my spam list just to see if it clears out some real comments. But this only happens very rarely. Its just my paranoia!
If you like me that manages multiple blogs, your can use the same API key for all as well.
Dermacia
12:29 am
Hey guys, this message board software this website runs on, is it something i can buy for my own website or is it propriatary?
Andrew
12:45 am
I personally use Akismet and I think it does its job well enough for me.
link
5:13 am
great, now all i need to find is a message board that works great with wordpress and has avatars and sigs unlike bbpress
lokimikoj
8:39 pm
Hello
Real nice! Your web site is helpful, Cheers!
Niyaz
2:05 am
Hi i really liked the plugins.. thanks for them will surely stop the spam done by the autobots