Blog spam is a bummer, isn’t it? So much of it is automated and shows up as Trackbacks or Pingbacks. Without using decent tools, a blogger can easily find themself spending way too much time chasing this stuff around. That causes folks to sometimes take extreme measures like forcing commenter registration or captchas — two options that usually have me opting to just skip leaving a comment.
Or worse yet, they turn off comments altogether. What fun is that in the blogging world? None, I say!
I happened upon a WordPress plugin recently that seems like it may be an interesting addition to my anti-spam measures. It is called Comment Timeout, by James McKay, and offers a pile of options towards the flexible (and automated) disabling of comments for old posts. If you’ve been fighting the spam battle for a while, you’ve surely noticed how much of that crap comes towards posts that are very old (presumably the assumption is that you may not be as likely to notice…).
I downloaded and installed it yesterday afternoon using basically default options. Since that time, instead of the hundreds (if not more) blocked spam comments that I’d normally have, I’ve had under 5.
That’s pretty awesome.
At the moment I’m now using:
- Akismet – I bounce back and forth between this and Spam Karma 2. Both have their pros and cons.
- Bad Behavior
- Comment Timeout
What are you using for anti-spam measures for your blog?
[Post Image: Spam Wall by freezelight]
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March 18th, 2007 
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Hi, I was wondering between SK2 and Akismet too, trying to help my friend that gets tons of spam. Have you tried SK2 with the Akismet plugin (www.sebbi.de/archives/2006/01/31/spam-karma-2-akismet-plugin/). Seems to be the best antispam combo and has been working fine for a month now.
Hey Aza – I’ve heard good things about that plugin and combo but haven’t tried it yet. Thanks for mentioning it, that might help me remember it for the next project.
[...] bit over a month ago, I mentioned Comment Timeout, a WordPress plugin that can be very helpful in the ongoing battle against blog spam. It does some [...]