24 Responses for "Halp!"

1. Kato June 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm 1

   Well, quit being so popular! Spammers won’t bother you if you’re boring.

2. Jason W. June 22nd, 2007 at 10:10 pm 2

   If you don’t mind spending some dough, try the SpamCube (http://www.spamcube.com). It’s like having your own hardware spam firewall.

3. twisty June 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 pm 3

   Greylisting is the best if you’re running your own mail server.

4. Dom June 23rd, 2007 at 12:43 am 4

   I’m seeing exactly the same thing with my wordpress blogs – and I’m nowhere near as popular as you.

   http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools
   has a load of anti-spam plugins. I’d suggest looking into some kind of CAPTCHA.

5. Rafa June 23rd, 2007 at 2:00 am 5

   Maybe you got to upgrade your wordpress.

6. Googleman81 June 23rd, 2007 at 2:56 am 6

   i dont wanna be the online reference guy and comment on everything here, but – i sure hope thats some good photoshop work in this pic. i totally like cats!

7. Rick C June 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 am 7

   John C. Dvorak says, “I get NO SPAM!”…self expression does not seem to be a problem in his life so I am sure that he would tell you what to do.

   Seriously, if you can come up with a working solution let the rest of us know. Think of the money, you could call in buzz out loud every day while being waited on hand and foot by your newly acquired boy toy. (ok I went off serious again but I am really short on coffee today)

8. Tim June 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 am 8

   What version of Wordpress is this running on? Perhaps an update would help?

9. Daniel Aleksandersen June 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 am 9

   Hi, Veronica. Since I love the Buzz Out Loud podcast so much, I am going to help you. Feel free to contact me via email if you need any help implementing these suggestions:

   First you must disable trackbacks. There should be an option for disabling it for new post. You will also have to edit every old post and choose to disable trackbacks.Secondly a really simple word verification would probably do the trick. Preferably a changing question like what month is it?.

   I hope this helps.

10. Blaze June 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 am 10

    I just wanted to comment to see if it shows up!

11. Alexis June 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 am 11

    I’ve used Hashcash on others people sites in the past and it seems to do a fairly good job at preventing spam from bots. Only problem with most of these obfuscation plugins is that they rely on javascript to check some hidden field in your form when you press submit.

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools#Obfuscation

    http://i0005.photobucket.com/albums/0005/icanhascheezburger/2007/6/12/1/128261114448593750lolcatalignr.jpg

12. Jeff June 23rd, 2007 at 11:58 am 12

    I had the same issue with my WordPress blog so I installed and use a WordPress plugin called “Anti SPAM image” (http://nio.infor96.com/archives/369). It requires the user to type a security code in order to post a comment. Easy to install and doesn’t require Javascript.

13. Rafa June 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm 13

    If none of all these tips don’t work, try the microsoft method: delete everything and re-install. This will, probably and literally, erase all your problems.
    But do some backup before as well.

14. QuadCom June 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 pm 14

    I setup Symantec’s hosted mail security for some customers of mine. They’ve gone from 1000+ spam a day to 1, I shit you not. For $42 a year it’s a pretty good deal.

    http://www.symantecstore.com/dr/sat2/ec_MAIN.Entry17c?CID=0&SID=49999&SP=10023&PN=90&PID=783261&v1=783261&V5=31034033&CUR=840

15. Parrotheader June 24th, 2007 at 9:26 pm 15

    A sea of spam. Mmmmmmmm. Tasty. And a possible solution to world hunger.

16. RS June 25th, 2007 at 6:02 am 16

    Checkout SPAMSIEVE…very clever program that will learn as it goes.

17. jeremiah June 25th, 2007 at 1:53 pm 17

    i’ve been having the same problems lately as well. although i do not allow any comments to post without my moderation, so no one ever sees the spam, but it is a pain in the ass to go through. it’s also depressing to see only comments about viagra or some new britney spears video and nothing from real visitors.

18. rich June 25th, 2007 at 10:48 pm 18

    what’s up with you putting my main myspace photo on your blog?!? that’s MY favorite photo…mine mine mine! *shakes fists*

19. Ben June 26th, 2007 at 7:41 am 19

    I do believe askimet is having growing pains lately. Apparently the remedy was to disable it.

20. Gabriel June 27th, 2007 at 5:37 am 20

    I’ve been using a plugin called spamkarma for a long while now. It does the job beautifully. try it out

    http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/

21. Luke June 28th, 2007 at 6:35 am 21

    Veronica,

    I use Bad Behavior:

    http://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/bad-behavior/

    It profiles bots and blocks them from posting garbage on tour blog – but it lets the well behaved ones (like googlebot for example) to index whatever they want.

    I combine this with Akismet and a simple CAPTCHA and it stopped 99% of spam. I used to get 200-300 spams a day. Now I get 3-5 a month, and all of them end up in the Akismet queue.

    When I disabled CAPTCHA for a day, I got 20-30 spams, but all of them were caught by Akismet, which was not that bad.

22. Marc June 28th, 2007 at 2:39 pm 22

    Just saw this one, and I figured you might be able to create your own LOLCAT from it:

23. Marc June 28th, 2007 at 2:39 pm 23

    Woops…guess it didnt like my HTML. Here is the link:

    http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20070626/capt.496ba0501f654b3b863ff9e7a3a01e9a.aptopix_germany_animal_shelter_vber501.jpg

24. Rawiri July 11th, 2007 at 6:16 pm 24

    Hi Veronica,
    I’ve tried a bunch of wordpress plugins and the two that help the most are akismet and comment timeout.

    With comment timeout, old posts automatically have comments disabled – as most spam will try to enter old comments to slip under the radar, this is an immensely useful plugin. Akismet then takes care of the rest, which after comment timeout is not much.

    Alternatively, you might like to look at Defensio:
    http://www.defensio.com/