3 Effective WordPress Plugins To Help Eliminate Spam
Check out these three plugins that can drastically reduce the number of spam comments on your WordPress site.
No one likes spam. Spammers don’t even like spam. So why does so much exist around the internet?
The truth is, spamming works. This unfortunate truth has encouraged thousands of people to explore how they can spam people online to make sales. You might think it’s impossible that anyone would click on an ad that says “Click here to claim your free HDTV!”, but if sent to 1,000,000 people, you’re sure to bait in a couple of gullible customers.
The International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley came up with an advanced formula following research into spam, which showed that a spammer can make $7,000 a day by sending out 1.7 million spam-infected emails.
We feel your pain when you log into WordPress and see 100 comments on a blog post, only to realize that they’re all spam.
Instead of deleting your website and joining the legions of spammers (please, don’t), try out these three WordPress plugins that are proven to significantly decrease, and possibly even eliminate, spam from your site:
Akismet
The most popular spam filter you can download through WordPress is Akismet. This advanced plugin checks all comments on your WordPress blog and filters out anything that resembles spam. It will keep a history of everything it blocks, allowing you to see which spam comments it caught.
You can manage other features with Akismet; you can even allow it to outright block and destroy the most obvious spam comments. This saves you the hassle of dealing with any spam and ends up saving you disk space.
Akismet comes in a free version for personal sites and blogs, but an upgraded premium service is available for commercial sites. Installation is easy and only requires a quick sign up (by doing this, you’ll receive an API key which you’ll then use to activate the plugin on your WordPress site).
Cookies For Comments
The Cookies For Comments plugin works by setting a cookie in the site visitor’s browser. The plugin checks for that cookie when the visitor tries to make a comment. If the cookie exists, it confirms that the visitor is a human and will not mark the comment as spam.
On the other hand, if the cookie isn’t there, the visitor is most likely a spam bot and the plugin will automatically mark the comment as spam.
You can adjust the settings once the plugin is installed to determine whether Cookies For Comments will delete or just block each suspicious comment.
Cookies For Comments is free to download and if you’re a developer – or if you’re feeling adventurous – you can add lines to your .htaccess file to block spam attempts before they even arrive at your site. Take a look at the forum here for more information.
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam doesn’t require CAPTCHAs or annoying challenge questions to allow comments on your site. Instead, it works in the background and simply makes spam disappear. This plugin works like a firewall to protect you from both human-generated spam and spambots. It uses an advanced two-layer spam blocker algorithm to weed through all types of spam.
Instead of just labeling spam, WP-SpamShield actively blocks the spam before it even gets to your site. This makes your site run faster and more efficiently.
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam is also free to download on WordPress sites.
Stop spam in its tracks by capitalizing on WordPress plugins! In addition to downloading a plugin, adjust your settings so that you have to approve each comment before it appears on your site. This protects you from those pesky late night spammers (or those in different time zones) from attacking your site while you’re not paying attention.
The world doesn’t need any more spam. Your site especially doesn’t need it.
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