Anyone operating a site with contact forms or comment forms or any forms already know how annoying spam is. We all want our sites to be professional and user friendly without 50 comments about this pill or that sex site. Blogs get hit hard with this type of spam everyday. I personally cannot stand those ad submitters as they are the main problem. Inexperianced marketers using tools they do not understand to promote products and sites they should stay away from make it frustrating for people like us.

This was a problem for a little while on this blog until I did a some research and found two plugins that have completely eliminated spambot activity on my site. This has made me very happy indeed because I used to scroll through 30 to 40 spam comments every day deleting them 1 by 1 to make sure I was not deleting comments from real users. Nowadays I will get the occasional spam comment but they come from people not reading the post and just trying to promote their own stuff. I realize self promotion is a part of commenting and I am OK with that, just take a minute to skim the article and post a comment that improves the conversation.

So which plugins am I using to kill spam like a ton of bricks falling on a grasshopper? The first one is very popular and it is NOT LIMITED TO WORDPRESS OR BLOGS! This anti-spam tool can be used “for almost any application with submitted content, including forums, wikis, and contact forms”. Of course I am referring to Akismet and it is an awesome tool for combating spam. It is like the Green Berets or a SWAT Team waiting to ambush spam. In a nutshell it works like this…

Akismet maintains a ‘blacklist’ of spam and spammers so when a comment gets posted on your site it will check this comment for hundreds of spam tricks and signatures. If the comment returns anything remotely considered spammy   it will hold it in moderation for you to check it and decide for yourself if it is spam or not. One very important aspect of this tool is that it will learn as it goes, meaning that if it catches a comment as spam and it is not spam all you have to do is click ‘not spam’ and it will try to remember that action for that type of comment.

The only requirement for using this plugin is that you will need to get an API key from wordpress.com. This is fast, easy, and free so there is no reason not to. Just sign up for an account, no need to start a blog unless you want one, and you will be given an API key as part of your account. Just activate the plugin and type in your API key and you will be ambushing spam and crushing it. Akismet is an awesome spam fighter and I highly recommend it. Learn more and download at… http://akismet.com/

The second plugin I use works with Akismet perfectly and with both of them working for me I have eliminated 99% of spam from spambots. It is called WP Captcha Free and it works great. One thing I like about it is there is no setup to worry about. Just install it and activate it, thats it your done. This is great from an administrator aspect and even better for the users as they do not have to fill in extra forms like captcha. This helps keep the comments coming from your real visitors and puts spambots in their place.

Here is the description from the website…”WP Captcha-Free blocks comment spam by using a combination of time-based hash (a.k.a. Time Based Tokens, TBT) and JavaScript (AJAX). When a comment is posted the plugin validates a hash based on time (and some other parameters). Comments posted via automated means will not have a hash or will have an expired hash and will be rejected. Unlike using a captcha, this does not place any burden on the commenter”. You can find out more and download from… http://wordpresssupplies.com/wordpress-plugins/captcha-free/

Basically if your not a human that is manually filling out the comment form then it will be considered spam. It puts an end to people commenting on your blog only for backlinks if they are using any type of submitter. I write articles for my readers and to help the community get better at what they do, not for idiots only looking for a backlink. If you truly want to build a successful website then stop thinking about backlinks and get busy writing some unique content.

Thanx and remember…Always strive to improve and success will follow
David Knops Jr
DKWebsites LLC

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