While the exact definition of SPAM (not the canned meat) differs from person to person, the general feeling of SPAM is the same – an irritating nuisance. Online entrepreneurs are usually the ones accused of spamming. Until lately I did not realize that the online entrepreneur’s blogs are subject to being spammed by comments. In fact, while browsing through the web, I found one fellow actually advertising a free tool to spam blog comments. 

After reading the do’s and don’ts in that article, I went back through the comments I had received.  I found quite a few that were easy to spot.  They are normally short and vague.  Sometimes the spam comment will pick up the post title or the blog title, even if the comment does not make sense. I felt betrayed – fellow bloggers were spamming me.

One day last week I checked the comments on my wordpress blog (not this one, but another one I have).  I had 117 comments caught by askimet.  Akismet has been very good at recognizing spam comments.  The only problem with akismet is you have to read through the comments to ensure a valid comment did not get caught before you delete them.  I went searching for a plugin to fix my spam problem. I actually found several different plugins in several different types.

One works by making the author preview the comment before submitting.  I did not choose this one since if you hit the submit button instead of the preview button, you received a note to use the back button to preview first.  When I hit the back button, the comment was gone.  As a commenter, I would throw up my hands and move on.  A similar one claimed to fix the back-button problem. I could not get that one to work. The comments on that plugin were very favorable; I just couldn’t get it to work.

Another type uses a capcha.  We all run into those all over the place.  Some of them I cannot read which causes me frustration.  If it causes me frustration to go throught 3 or 4 before I get the capcha correct, it will frustrate some of my commenters.  Again, I moved on. 

A third type uses a simple math.  I found two of these.  I have used them on other’s blogs when commenting.  They seemed a simple solution that did not bother me. Some people are not very good at math.  So why take the chance of frustrating a good follower just because they might not add quickly? 

I found and installed WP-spamfree.  This handy plugin is ‘plug and play’ with a few options available if you want.  I copied the code for the ‘badge’ which shows how many comments were caught.  I simply opened the footer.php and place the code at the very top (before the footer theme code).  You can see mine at Be the Weight You Want.  In less than 24 hours it has caught 12 spam comments.  I put the badge on the page so my readers would know it was to catch spam.  Now my akismet can be my safety net incase wp-spamfree misses something.

In my testing of this plugin, it has been virtually invisible to the commenter.  I hope if my readers comments do not get through they will let me know. I will have to put a contact link in my sidebar so they (you) can let me know if my new tool blocks them.

Do you have this problem?  What is your answer?

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