I wrote previously on why Spam is a reader’s problem too. Within this post I will list several techniques for WordPress users to limit the amount of spam that show up on blogs.

Install a Back-End Solution

There are three WordPress plugins that are highly effective at killing spam. Each has their advantages and disadvantages, however.

Akismet

Akismet is very effective at flagging spam. Akismet is a web service that runs a comment through hundreds of tests in order to determine if the comment is spam or not. If the comment is spam, Akismet dumps the comment into its Akismet Spam folder.

One drawback is that Akismet does tend to label some comments as spam when they are not. When a blog gets hundreds of pieces of Akismet spam a day, one legit commenter may be lost in the shuffle.

Bad Behavior

Bad Behavior is a very effective plugin for stopping spam bots from pounding your site with comments. It’s very unobtrusive unless a comment is blocked.

A drawback I have personally dealt with is that legit commentators were being blocked. On a lightly-trafficked personal blog I had five people e-mail in the span of a month saying that a comment had been blocked by Bad Behavior.

Spam Karma

Spam Karma is another really good plugin for stopping spam. Spam Karma’s goal (according to its website) is to stop all forms of automated blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters.

My personal experience with Spam Karma is that there are way too many false positives. My most frequent commenters were constantly being flagged for spam.

Install a CAPTCHA

One of the more controversial ways to limit spam is to install a CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs overall have been given a bad reputation due to the unreadable monstrosities on most websites and not to mention the accessibility problems by blind or dyslexic users. CAPTCHAs almost seem taboo because they inconvenience readers and cause them to perform one more step in order to leave a comment.

I don’t think CAPTCHAs should be dismissed so easily, however. I feel that the inclusion of CAPTCHAs on the comment form are more of a trade-off rather than whether they are good or bad.

Here are some arguments against CAPTCHAs:

CAPTCHAs Don’t Work

Lorelle from The Blog Herald simply said that CAPTCHAs do not work. While I agree with Lorelle to an extent, I have to expand on her statement and say that CAPTCHAs do not work if used as the exclusive anti-spam technique. There needs to be some kind of back-end anti-spam measure such as Akismet in place to catch the stragglers that do make it through.

CAPTCHAs Inconvenience Readers

While it is true that CAPTCHAs do require readers to perform an extra step before leaving a comment, I would argue that this is far better than the comment being blocked outright from plugins such as Spam Karma or Bad Behavior.

CAPTCHAs are Inaccessible

Saying that all CAPTCHAs are inaccessible as a general statement is false. However, there are indeed the CAPTCHAs that are just flat out impossible to decipher. I am not a fan of such CAPTCHA techniques.

CAPTCHAs — if used — should be human readable and be accessible.

CAPTCHAs Aren’t Necessary

One point the author of this anti-CAPTCHA essay is that CAPTCHAs aren’t really necessary given the back-end anti-spam solutions for WordPress.

However, even these back-end anti-spam solutions have their disadvantages. CAPTCHAs shouldn’t so easily be dismissed as an unnecessary solution.

A WordPress CAPTCHA Solution

Mike Jolley wrote a WordPress plugin that installs an accessible CAPTCHA-type comment question in a WordPress comment form. The plugin he wrote is called WordPress Comment Spam Stopper.

After using this plugin as well as Akismet, the spam on my personal blog went down to zero. No readers have complained about it, and no readers have gotten their comments blocked. Furthermore, if Akismet did happen to flag a legit comment as spam, I could easily fish it out since there aren’t hundreds of other spammy comments fighting for my attention.

Conclusion

There is no die-hard solution to the spam problem of WordPress blogs. The anti-spam techniques you choose depend on the trade-offs that you are willing to live with. I’m already of the opinion that spam is a reader’s problem too, so the spam technique I prefer is the one that inconveniences them the least.

Thank you for reading and feel free to debate or add to any of my points in the comments.

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