Three WordPress Plugins to Fight Comment Spam


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Hi everyone, and welcome to Tubetorial. I’m Lorraine Nepomuceno.

If you have a blog, you probably know what a problem comment spam can be. Today I want to show you three WordPress plugins to fight comment spam. To use these, your blog must be powered by self-hosted WordPress. I’ll be including links to where you can download these plugins in the post accompanying this tutorial.

The first plugin is Akismet. This one comes with WordPress, so you probably already have it in your plugins list. If you haven’t activated it, I highly recommend that you do- it’s very simple, and it does a good job of eliminating a lot of comment spam. It works by submitting a new comment or trackback to the Akismet web service, which runs tests to check whether or not it is spam. To activate the plugin, you’ll need to get a WordPress.com API Key- sign up for a free account at WordPress.com, and you’ll find it in your profile page.

Download the Akismet WordPress Plugin »

Next up is a plugin called WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam. Now this is a complex plugin, but what it basically does is identify your spambot visitors- and weeding them out from human visitors. It also has a “Blocked Comment Logging Mode”, that logs blocked comments for 7 days- which you can check to verify whether the comments are indeed spam.

Download the WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam Plugin »

Finally, the last anti-spam plugin I’m linking to is WP-reCAPTCHA. If you know what reCAPTCHA is, you can imagine what this plugin does. This is how the plugin’s Options page looks- you’ll need to sign up for two API keys (it’s free at the reCAPTCHA site), and as you can see, you can enable it for comments, or hide it from registered users, and enable it on your registration form, in case you accept signups on your WordPress blog. It also has another feature called MailHide, which helps protect email addresses on your blog- always a good thing.

Download the WP-reCAPTCHA Plugin »

Of course, you can use a combination of these plugins, or just one or two of them, depending on your needs. I’ve used all of them, and they really do lessen, if not completely obliterate, comment spam.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Tubetorial! For more video tutorials, visit us at Tubetorial.com


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4 Comments

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  1. I’m using reCaptcha only on most of my blogs, some which are getting heavy spam combined with Askimet and I yet have to find a spam that slips through. Since no bot seems to be able to break reCaptcha, Askimet only needs to care for the manual spammers…good combo.

  2. Akismet is surely “given” already, its a built-in plugin in WP so to speak. I was made aware of that since I’ve been involve in related tasks throughout theFreelance Job Opportunities I’ve had.

    But I must say, captcha is a definite no no. If I stumble into a site then I want to get involve by adding a comment, it turns me off to see that I have to fill captcha.

  3. Although Akismet is my default spam protecting plugin but i have tried Wp-spam free plugin and i must say, it works great.