When you create a website using a content management system, you inadvertently invite spammers. The spammers will try to get you to post their comments. They will tell talk about how the website and your posts are wonderful. They might even try to talk intelligently about the content on your site, all in an effort for their comment to show on your site. How does this benefit them? Comment spammers post links to sites they are promoting in their comments and the more their links appear throughout the internet on reputable sites, the more it helps them in search engines.
An occasional comment spam may not bother you and is easily deleted, but when you start receiving multiple comments a day, this becomes a time-consuming annoyance to deal with. The problem is you don’t want to just delete all the comments you receive because some of them might be real comments. The next problem is that some of the spammers are pretty convincing in appearance. It can take an unappealing amount of time out of your day to determine whether each comment is legitimate or not.
So, how do you avoid comments from spammers showing up on your site? First, make sure you have your CMS set to notify you of all comments and pingbacks. They like to post comments on anything they can, so it won’t be obvious to you when you have comments in some cases, like if they have commented on an image within your site. It’s best to simply get a notification each time you receive a comment.
Next, make sure you have your CMS set to allow you to moderate your comments. This means that if you haven’t actually clicked an “approve” button, it won’t show up on your site.
If you get lots of spam comments, use a service like Akismet to filter your spam comments. Akismet charges a small fee to do a lot of work for you. They can tell what comments are spam and send it to your spam box automatically without you having to click anything. By default, WordPress comes with an Akismet plugin. To activate it, you need to visit the Akismet site and create an account. The type of account you get is based on your needs. After you pay for the account, you’ll receive a unique Akismet key, which is e-mailed to you. After you get the key, you copy it and paste it into your site’s Akismet plugin settings. Once you’ve entered your key, the plugin is ready to go.
Install a validation system, like a CAPTCHA plugin, to your site. WordPress has a few CAPTCHA plugins that are free and do a decent job at deterring some spam. They work by producing an image with text in it that the user has to type into a validation field in order for the comment to be submitted. In the case of WordPress, you can install the plugin from within your site’s admin area by clicking on Plugins and then search for “captcha.” Once you have found the plugin you would like, you can simply install it by clicking “install” and then go to the plugin’s settings to configure anything it requires in order to activate it. You know it is working properly when you go to a post or page that allows comments and you see a verification image in the comment section.
Here’s a couple CAPTCHA plugins we have used
- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/captcha/
- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/
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