WordPress Spam Struck
In the last fifteen days I have been hit with 150 spam comments. Over the life of this blog the total comment and trackback spam count is 461. It seems to come in waves–pharmaceuticals, gambling and sex–and targets a particular post until I shut down commenting on it.
I currently moderate all first time comments, as well as ones that contain multiple links. Therefore, I have to look over the spam in order to weed out the legitimate comments. Today it was downright revolting. I was going to post a screenshot, but the words would make you sick. There is no need to perpetuate the garbage.
Enter Akismet, “a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.” In order to install and run the plugin you will first need a WordPress.com API key. I hope it works well, as I am relaxing the commenting moderation a little bit. Since I started typing this post Akisment has already caught one spam comment.
ugh… sorry man. Glad you see some help/hope from so tools.
From a web technical standpoint, it will never get better unless there’s a major shift in how the web works. Whenever you give the opportunity for essentially anon imput into a website, you’re opening yourself up to headaches.
Yeah, and I’m sure that in the long run the spammers will find a way around Akismet…and so the spam blockers will have to be more sophisticated, too. It’s such an incredible waste of energy and resources…plus it makes me mad.
So far the filter seems to be working. It has caught over a dozen spam comments so far. And while I still ought to review them from time to time for legitimate comments (they are deleted after 15 days), at least my email inbox is not cluttered up with moderation requests.
I dont even bother reviewing comments that have been flagged by wordpress. Pretty much I dont have the time to go through them all (mind you I have only been hit twice with a combined total of 360 or so spam comments). If people comment in a way that looks like spam and dont see their comment on the site they will get a hold of me one way or another.
Akismet works wonders on my blog. It’s the best thing since…well…I don’t know. But it’s great.
[...] Akismet has caught 1,053 spam for you since you installed it. [...]