Whenever we help someone get a blog started, the next question we get is almost always how do we manage comment spam? It is indeed sad that such a wonderful system is abused to the point it is no longer enjoyable. No point complaining it is what it is.
If you use WordPress there are so many choices available to you. I’ve tried a lot of them to name a few:
- Akismet
- Disqus
- WP Spam Free
- And probably a few others I don’t even remember
They each have their pros and cons really and I think you should always use what works for you. For the longest time I used Disqus as some of you may have noticed on this blog. I found the spam filtering works really well and I liked the ability to moderate comments for all my sites from one central location. The ability to reply from my email address definitely is a plus too.
However, I wanted to go back to something simpler. Something that would be less confusing for readers especially those who are new. I don’t mind ‘paying’ Disqus with a little bit of branding and all that. I also got tired of manually weeding out the spam from WP database itself. Disqus will not show the spam comments but they will still save all comments to your database.
I also wanted to come back to something that is native of WordPress so I could use other plugins with it.
My first instinct is to go back to WP Spam Free that worked well for me. But I also know sometimes it can be annoying. I finally settled on NoSpamNX. The idea behind it sounded brilliant to me. In short, it adds a hidden field into your comments form. Hidden fields are not viewable by humans but bots definitely see them and because bots are… well, bots, they cannot look at the form and intelligently decide to fill in the field or not. They would almost always choose to enter content in the field.
When a comment is submitted with data in the hidden field, the plugin marks it as spam.
So far it has worked nicely. I still get some spam, just a few more than WP Spam Free. I think this might be due to the fact that people do pay others peanuts to sit and do nothing but comment. But overall I’m quite happy. Especially considering the stats (see below). Out of the 100 or so a day I get between 0 – 3.
