2 Layer Comment Spam Protection for Your WordPress Blog

I recently moved this blog and my personal blog to a new hosting provider. During the transition to the new host, I forgot to activate the comment spam protection plugins on my personal blog. Within hours of my blog coming online again, the comment spammers had already set their sights on me.

I didn’t realize how much time the two best spam protection plugins were saving me until I was bombarded with spam. Needless to say, they are running now and I’m breathing easier.

These are the two must-have WordPress plugins to prevent the majority of spam from infiltrating your blog comments:

1. Akismet - Checks comments against the Akismet web service in real-time to determine if the comment or trackback looks like spam. If Akismet thinks the comment is spam, it is quarantined to the Akismet Spam section (under Comments) in your WordPress dashboard. You will need a WordPress API key to use this plugin. You can get a free API key if you sign-up for a WordPress user account.
2. Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam - Prevents automated spam bots from leaving comments on your blog by requiring the a human to read and enter a random word that’s displayed in an image.

I realize I already mentioned these two in my recommended WordPress plugins post, but I think it bears repeating so you don’t end up in the same boat I was.

Update: There is a problem with Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam that causes all trackbacks and pingbacks to be discarded. I have duplicated the problem with the most recent version (2.81) and am looking into a fix.

Update #2: There’s not a problem with Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam plugin! In order for trackbacks and pingbacks to show-up, you have to change the settings in the PHP file, like this:

// Set this to equal TRUE if you want to allow trackbacks (but be vulnerable to trackback spam)
$cas_allowtrack = true;
// Set this to equal TRUE if you want to allow pingbacks (but be vulnerable to pingback spam)
$cas_allowping = true

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