Comments on: Halp!

By: Rawiri

Rawiri — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:16:23 +0000

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/

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:39:32 +0000

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

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:39:13 +0000

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

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:35:29 +0000

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.

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:37:27 +0000

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/

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:41:51 +0000

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

By: rich

rich — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:48:49 +0000

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

By: jeremiah

jeremiah — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:53:28 +0000

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.

By: RS

RS — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:02:28 +0000

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

By: Parrotheader

Parrotheader — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:26:21 +0000

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

By: QuadCom

QuadCom — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:29:50 +0000

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

By: Rafa

Rafa — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 22:17:59 +0000

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.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:58:12 +0000

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.

By: Alexis

Alexis — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:32:40 +0000

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

By: Blaze

Blaze — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 16:19:52 +0000

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

By: Daniel Aleksandersen

Daniel Aleksandersen — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:49:10 +0000

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.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:08:45 +0000

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

By: Rick C

Rick C — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:08:31 +0000

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)

By: Googleman81

Googleman81 — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 10:56:41 +0000

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!

By: Rafa

Rafa — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 10:00:26 +0000

Maybe you got to upgrade your wordpress.