12 ways to utterly crush spambots on your blog

Mar 7, 2008

12 ways to utterly crush spambots on your blog

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Crush Spambots

Spambots.

They’re icky things, they are. Their sole purpose is to get their owner’s links on your blog via automatic postings that, if left unchecked, can flood your blog and bring it to its knees.

Luckily, there are several wordpress plugins you can add to your blog and decimate the effect of robospammers. And here they are!

1.) Askimet. Yes yes yes, I know, everyone knows about it. It comes bundled with Wordpress; you will need a Wordpress API key to activate it. Get it, do it, activate it and be glad it’s on your site.

2.) Bad Behavior. Superfragilisticexpialodocious plugin that helps stop spambots before they even get to your blog.

3.) Spam Karma 2. Multiple language support, it installs easily and effectively.

4.) Recaptcha. This is the tool that makes people fill out 2 words prior to being allowed to comment or login. ’tis very nice indeed.

5.) Simple Spam Catcher. This plugin does simple tests and immediately rejects blatant spam.

6.) Fake Comment Form! Only spambots see it, and it drives them bonkers. Requires editing your comments.php file.

7.) Use a timestamp to reduce spam. Robots can post faster than people. This plugin helps determine how rapidly a post was made…and if it’s obviously by a robot, then blocks it.

8.) Simple Trackback Evaluation. This plugin checks the IP address of the trackback, to ensure it’s the same as the URL referrer.

9.) Add Recaptcha to your Word Press Login. Nice plugin that halts spam user account creations.

10.) Math Comment Spam Protection. Add a math question visitors must answer to all comments! (and with today’s math, DON’T ask something like "342-173" - that’s "New Math", courtesy of Tom Lehrer).

There are other plugins you can use, of course…the above is meant only to get you started.

Now, what else can you do to smooshilate spam? You can implement these two easy steps:

11.) Ban on link numbers. Go to your Wordpress Dashboard and choose Options | Discussion, scroll down to Comment Moderation, and set number of links to 1.

12.) Add a comments blacklist. Go to Options | Discussion, and scroll down to Comment Blacklist. Here you can add words that will trigger non-posting. It does meta matches, so if you include, say, "pet", that will affect words like "pete, peter" etc.

If you need some help in installing plugins, please feel free to check out my posting Soup Up Your Blog with Plugins.

Hope this is helpful! And if you’d like other spamkilling ideas, consider:

What ideas do you have for killing spam? Please feel free to share them here.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

(By the way, if you have any questions about the topics in this posting "12 ways to utterly crush spambots on your blog", do comment below - I'll try to clarify any issues).

Barbara Ling and Owlbert

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