Michael Specht

I just noticed Joel Cheesman has posted about how to stop Spam on a WordPress blog (for a history on Spam check out the Wikipedia entry). While I would agree that adding entries to you .htaccess file works it is a fairly brutal way of handling spam. I also just noticed Joel has removed trackbacks and now forces users to log in to comment on his blog, all in the interests of stopping spam.

I completely understand where Joel is coming from but I would suggest a slightly different tatic that does not put too many barriers in the way on the conversation.

1. Turn on comment moderation for all comments, however this can mean you spend hours going through the 100’s of spam comments.
2. Implement the Spam words feature in Wordpress
3. Upgrade to a Wordpress version that has Akismet installed by default, V2 I think?
4. Then look at using Spam Karma

If after all thig you still get way too many spam comments getting through THEN look to implementing the registered users feature.  Wordpress even has a complete page dedicated to how to fight spam.

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