Plugins Can Rid Your Webpage of Spam
Spam Fighters Unite
If you saw my last post, I was in a major conflict with bots inflicting spam on my page. I received many encouraging comments, but no one seemed to have won the spam war. So I went to my go-to guy, Bill Wetterman, husband in residence.
Naturally, his first response was, “Gee. Not sure what is going on with YOUR website. Mine is spam-free.”
“Okay, if you are spam-free, can we check your plugins to see what I am missing?”
He took on the challenge immediately.
The first plugin we added was Akismet. This plugin, free on WordPress, immediately recognized spam comments and sent them all to the spam folder. Twice daily, I emptied the spam folder with one click. Magic. But being a fussy OCD, I wanted the spam to stop completely.
Next, Bill added FunCaptcha. This plugin is also free on WordPress. The primary function is to offer a simple math puzzle that must be successfully passed before anyone can become a user or subscriber. Ta Da. It worked, too. I was so excited to receive this note . FunCaptcha defeats bots from becoming a user .
I am pleased to say that my spam has stopped, at least for now. The plugin has captured over 1,800 new spam comments in the last four days. Before adding two new plugins, the bots gained access by becoming users on my page. Even after reducing the number of users to be only two, me and my Sunant host, they still gained access. Every day I had two to ten new users and 95 to 789 spam comments. Yes, every day.
I hope this info can help some of you in your fight with those nasty bots. Good luck.
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Thanks Pam. I was under the impression that Akismet had a monthly fee. I haven’t had as much spam as you, but 60 a day is not unusual.
So If we prefer to see our chickens and pigs upside down, we are out of luck.
Pam, I use Askimet, and was using Captcha last time we talked. I was being especially hit by Chinese bots, and they were caught, didn’t post, but then I had to go into the spam folder to delete them. I don’t know how they got around Captcha. Anyway, a friend told me about Stop Spammers and I was able to deactivate Captcha, which made some of my readers happy although, I made it incredibly easy. Stop Spammers was installed on January 26th and I deactivated Captcha to see if it would work. Since that day I have had a total of 3 spams, two of which showed up the day after, so maybe it hadn’t fully activated.
I am stunned that some were able to set up new users on your site. You sent me to mine immediately but all looked normal. I didn’t know that was possible. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll keep an eye on mine.
You are such a wealth of information. We need to tap into your knowledge much sooner. Thanks.
Thanks for the info. I will check into Disqus.