{"id":45,"date":"2010-03-03T10:32:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T02:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foxtwo.org\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2010-03-03T10:32:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T02:32:43","slug":"wp-spamfree-kicks-spam-in-the-butt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.foxtwo.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/wp-spamfree-kicks-spam-in-the-butt\/","title":{"rendered":"WP-SpamFree Kicks Spam In The Butt!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of you may know that I switched this blog from Blogger<\/a> platform over to self-hosted WordPress very recently, thanks (or no-thanks) to Blogger’s decision to cease support for FTP publishing from 26th March onwards.<\/p>\n

My blog has always been fine and relatively spam-free for the entire duration when I was on Blogger – about 7 or so years. I get maybe 1 or 2 spam comments every couple of MONTHS. Maybe my blog was (and still is) relatively unknown and only read by my friends and perhaps a few “drive-by” bloggers visiting other sites, helped with keeping the spam count so low.<\/p>\n

However, as soon as I switched over to WordPress, spam comments started appearing. Not too many at first, maybe 3 or 4 per day. Still manageable. However, as of last night approximately 11pm Singapore time, I started getting a spate of automated spam-bot comments. No, none of them made it into the blog, all were flagged as spam and held in the moderation queue (yay for Intense Debate<\/a>‘s spam filters!). However, there were like 300 of them in the span of 10 mins or so.<\/p>\n

I really would like to know how the hell these spammers found my blog. It’s been so unknown over 7 odd years and suddenly when I switch over to WP, they notice me. Is there a WP Blog directory listing somewhere on the Internet that these spammers go to look for new victims or what??<\/p>\n

Anyway back to the point of this post. Having to go through 300 spam to delete is still a chore, even if they are held in the moderation queue. There is no way (that I know of) to automatically delete them after a set period of days, say 7 or 14 days. What happens if there’s a legitimate comment in the queue that accidentally got flagged because the commenter put in a couple of links? I’d have to wade through 300+ spam comments to find the legitimate one!<\/p>\n

So off I went, searching for a CAPTCHA<\/a> type of plug-in for the blog. Yeah that was the first thing I thought of. Since I use Intense Debate commenting system, I looked there first. No luck. I talked to Intense Debate Support via Twitter<\/a>, and they confirmed that they do not have any CAPTCHA solutions.<\/p>\n

Then I found something called WP-SpamFree <\/a>in the WordPress plugin directory. The name sounded familiar, and I remembered Daphne<\/a> mentioned it before in a plurk, and she said she liked it.<\/p>\n

At this point in time, I was skeptical because I am not using the native WordPress commenting system – I’m using Intense Debate. I did not see how WP-SpamFree might work if I wasn’t using the built-in one. Secondly WP-SpamFree claims to work its magic without using common methods such as CAPTCHA to verify that the commenter is a real human. I just didn’t see how it could possibly work, but seeing as I had nothing to lose except spam comments, I installed it anyway.<\/p>\n

The installation and activation went without a hitch. No need to edit any files, no need to check\/uncheck anything else. The default settings pretty much covered everything.<\/p>\n

And then my jaw dropped. WP-SpamFree started to record the “kill-counts” of spam. NOTHING NEW<\/strong> entered the moderation queue! I was amazed for 2 reasons – it worked with an external commenting system, AND it worked without the user realizing anything was different! On the surface, the user will see nothing new, nothing different.<\/p>\n

Of course, there will be a small percentage of users that will encounter problems when they come to this blog. Those would be the users that have Javascript and\/or cookies disabled. However the vast majority will notice no difference at all.<\/p>\n

WP-SpamFree really does kick butt!<\/p>\n

ps: As of this writing, spam-bots are still trying. And still failing. *evil laughter*<\/em><\/p>\n

pps: A couple of friends reported possible problems when I was running WP-SpamFree, hence I have now switched over to NoSpamNX<\/a>. Same effectiveness, minus the problems!
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