Lately I’m seeing this weblog get inundated with all sorts of spam in the form of comments. For some reason there’s one post from last year that seems to be the primary target, which I find very strange. Not being that much of a techie when it comes to this kind of thing, it’s starting to get a little annoying having to clean up these comments, some of which direct you to not-so-nice websites – if you know what I mean.
There are WordPress plug-ins I’ve tried to use to head off these kinds of comments by looking for certain keywords, and it has helped, but these spammers are fairly sophisticated and still succeed in still getting a fair number through – anywhere between half a dozen to a dozen or more a day. It’s more of a nuisance than anything else, but a nuisance it nevertheless remains – after all, the actual number of legitimate comments from this weblog’s readers has never been very large.
I know there are regular readers who are also bloggers out there (like Rob and Dave, for instance) who have probably encountered this kind of thing before, so perhaps they’ll be nice enough to offer their own feedback. The easiest solution will be to simply begin moderating all comments (meaning one can still comment but there will be a delay in their appearance until I actually let them through), but if I can avoid that, that would be my preference.
I dunno, what do you think?
Not familiar with WordPress so I don’t know much about their plugins. My advice is to close comments on older entries. The conversation is usually over after a few days anyway. Certainly close comments on any older entry that’s being targeted regularly.
The spam bots target the older entries for a variety of reasons but the main one is that the older entries have had time to acquire a Google PageRank.
Comment by Rob — August 20, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
Sorry, I’m just getting into playing around with WordPress for another blog and I haven’t gotten to that point. I use Typepad for my blog and they do most of the filtering work behind the scenes I think. It’s pretty rare for any spam to slip through and while I don’t get that many hits per day, I would expect more than one spam comment every two months or so.
Comment by Dave E. — August 20, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
We have a site here locally called http://www.cumminghome.com
They have a plug-in that requires anyone posting a comment to answer a question at the bottom, which keeps all spammers out. It is the same question all the time, but spammers don’t ever get to answer it because they don’t see the screen.
By the way, in a shameless plug, you can see a new video segment on that site called “Dave Richard just won’t shut up” featuring, well – me. Check out the comment section below that to see what I am referencing.
Comment by Dave Richard — August 21, 2008 @ 9:25 am