For beginners like me, it is often difficult to differentiate between genuine blog comment and spam comment. I receive 15 to 25 new comments each day on my one of the WordPress powered blog, most of which are spams and it is already difficult for me to manage them.
So I Googled over this issue and found some very useful solutions which i am going to share with you. Although no spam filter is so powerful to nullify all the spam filter, But Spam comments can be reduced using the methods mentioned below.
Reduce Spam comments on WordPress blog
There are many plugins and some direct methods to reduce Spam comments on WP blog. Here I have covered both the aspects of filtering.
#1) Akismet (Automatic Kismet) WordPress plugin
This plugin comes with every WordPress installation and is a trusted plugin for filtering spams from genuine comments. It checks each and every comments, ping-backs and trackbacks submitted in your blog. In order to activate it, you need an API key, which you can get for free by simply signing in Akismet.
#2) Re-CAPTCHA WordPress plugin
This is another effective method to reduce spam but it might reduce the number of your regular comments because most people find it annoying to enter CAPTCHA for posting comments in a blog. The idea behind Re-CAPTCHAis to display an image with distorted words and ask users to type the word before submitting the comment. This way, spam bots will be prevented to post their comments in your blog.
#3) Mollom WordPress Plugin
This is one of the largest website spam filtering system which drastically reduces the burden of blog moderation. You can install the Mollom WordPress plugin for free and need to create an account and activate the plugin.
Mollom uses
Akismet-type spam filtering technique combined with
CAPTCHA to check spam comments.
#4) Close comments on older posts
Older posts that receive a good traffic are often the best targets for spammers, so closing comments on older posts is a good strategy to fight spam comments . Just go to
Settings -> Discussions. Click on the Automatically close comments on article older than check-box and enter the number of days. The disadvantage of this method is that your post might miss some useful comments over long time.
#5) Direct method - Editing WordPress .htaccess file
If you find some IP addresses are constantly sending spam comments in your blog posts, you can block those IPs by editing the
.htaccess file. First of all, download the
.htaccess file from the root directory of your web server, edit the file by adding the list of black-listed IPs as deny from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx and upload it. Here is the demo IP blocking code to enter in . htaccess file.
<Limit GET POST>order allow,denydeny from xx.xxx.xxx.xxxallow from all</Limit>
Here
xx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address to block, Replace it with the IP address you want to block. It is highly recommended to backup your
.htaccess file before editing it.
So these were some of the effective methods used to reduce Spam comments on WordPress blog. If you know some more such methods tell me and all in the comment section below. Have a spam free blog 😊.
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