Blog comment and trackback spam is simply out of control, which I expressed on the Adult Webmaster Forum Ask Damage X and the reason for this article. For me it isn't about filtering spam, great.. another plugin to do what others do. What I wanted was to stop spam, or as much of it as I could, from happening at all on TheDocBlog. In short, I want to reduce the little bit of bandwidth it costs and any server or mysql resources spam takes up, or as much as possible!

Over the last year I have created my own IP and Host Ban lists blocking 1000's of IP's from making comments, as well my my own word spam lists, javascript forms, false-hidden forms, different word and math captchas, renamed my comment post file. With all these goodies in place TheDocBlog still receives at least 75 filtered spams through my blocks. I have tested several different spam filter plugins, but filtering spam really isn't all that hard, and my end goal is to totally stop the spam from happening.

Based off some of the comments on ADX, I decided to do a quick little test. For 24 hours I would release the IP bans, rename my wp-comments-post.php file back, but keep some other basic setups in place all to track how many total spams I get in a 24 hour period. All comments are moderated so I don't really care if the filters catch them or not.

Some Quick Testing:
As stated above, TheDocBlog uses a mixture of non-plugin methods to filter spam. I didn't remove all the little changes, but I did remove all IP and Host blocks from the .htaccess file and replaced the original wp-comments-post.php file. The Javascript form buttons, captchas and everything else stated above is still in place.

  • 10:30 am - Sat Dec 27 - IP/Host blocks released, and original comments post file replaced.
  • 10:30 am - Sun Dec 28 - Cleared 226 spams and added the Wordpress Plugin, WP-SpamFree which is a spam blocker and not a spam filter!
  • In the above 24 hour period TheDocBlog received: 226 spam comments and trackbacks.
  • In a single day, this is an increase of 150+ spams, connections, db usage and so on.
  • 10:30am - Mon Dec 29 - This morning I cleared... ZERO spams! Yep, can't believe it myself. WP-SpamFree works like a freakin champion. Wow, what a waste of time dealing with other plugins, custom Wordpress changes, and ip bans. WP-SpamFree Rocks the house and a donation from me is on the way!

The Spam is Dead!
Again, what an amazing plugin. I'm a little shocked to be honest. I expected to test several plugins, some of which allow me to ban IP's & hosts from the wp-admin, others to improve filtering, and so on. As of late last night I removed all hidden forms, removed the math captcha, my own javascript blocks, and replaced the original comment file contents. With all of my own protection methods removed, I still have zero spams, amazing!

Thanks to Kektex on ADX for the advice on trying out WP-SpamFree and thanks to Hybrid6 for creating such a great plugin!

~TheDoc




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