The Problem
Whenever you have a blog that allows comments on posts, you immediately become a target for spammers and spambots and all those friendly neighborhood pests. The good news is that comments are always held for moderation, so you may be thinking, no problem. But yes, it is still a big problem that can be extremely time-consuming to deal with (think 60,000 spam comments to try to sift through for legitimate comments in the comment approval process).
Steps We Take to Prevent the Problem
We use several WordPress solutions to nip the spam problem in the bud:
Antispam Bee – One of the best plug-ins for detecting and eliminating spam.
Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin – Adds a checkbox to your blog posts that get generated client-side to confirm that they are not a spammer. Because the checkbox is generated client-side, bots cannot see it, so 99% of spambots are eliminated.
What about CAPTCHAs?
As is the case in many situations in life, solving one problem creates another problem. Many people resort to CAPTCHAs which is a legitimate solution, but we believe it hurts usability. How many times have you incorrectly entered those crazy letters because they are so warped that only The Grinch himself can read it?! If there is a better solution that prevents spam but doesn’t hurt usability then we will pursue that solution.
If You Still Have a Problem
If you still have a problem with an overwhelming amount of spam on your website, the first thing you need to do is let us know. We can come in and clean up spam and take additional steps to prevent it. Our goal is to make all our websites spam-free. We want you to focus on your business—not on dealing with spam.
For the Techy
Some of the steps we take if a client experiences spam despite our default preventive measures are outlined in an excellent article on WPShout. You can read the article here.