Tagged - spam

Why I Disabled Comments On Older Posts

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

I’ve started to wonder if having comments is even worth it. Most people don’t comment, the ones that do don’t have much useful information to share most of the time. Sometimes they do, but really I tend to think discussions are better off on forums.

Comment sections always have spammers even if you have all the protections in place, you’re still going to get them. Yes, even if you’re using recaptcha or similar. People from India are paid to solve these captchas. When Web 2.0 started, it really helped out spammers, because now they had tons of places to spam.

On a lower traffic site like mine, 99% of comments are spam. I do get real visitors, but they don’t really comment, as expected. So in my situation, it’s easier just to turn them off if a post is older than 7 days. If the site starts getting thousands and thousands of unique visitors per day I might enable them again. That’s not real likely with my current writing patterns and keywords, but who knows. I just write what I feel like on here and I’m not targeting anything.

WP-SpamFree – So Far So Good

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I’ve been running this anti-spam plugin for a few days now because bots were bypassing my captcha by registering, or they were able to solve it. I was getting around 15 spam comments a day, maybe more.

When I first implemented the captcha, I didn’t get any spam at all really. Then the spam started to come more and more. Just think, if I had no captcha running or any other anti-spam plugin I would be dealing with 100′s of spam comments a day no doubt. WP-SpamFree has really kept it spam free so far. I wasn’t really looking for it either I just saw it in my WordPress dashboard and installed it from there. Gotta love WordPress. Be aware however that you will need to enable javascript and cookies so you can post. Most people have these on by default anyway.

If your blog is suffering a spam issue I highly recommend this plugin. I’m still going to leave the captcha in place just for extra measure, but I’m really happy to be living spam free for the time being. :)

Attack of the Spammers!

Friday, April 24th, 2009

spamWell my captcha isn’t working as well as it should. I’m getting 8 spam comments a day or more. I’m going to implement a new policy where all older posts have comments closed. Spam comments have gone up on pages that have PR, or are ranked high for some weird keyword in google.

Like I said, no worries I’ll just close off comments on old posts. These comments seem to be done manually so BadBehavior isn’t catching them.

I see some are cloaking their spam attempts by writing an almost genuine comment, and putting their link as some .edu profile page where it says “buy viagra here” :) Common tactic, I’ve seen it all before.

Too Much SPAM

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

1559606_340_1116081430036-spamI really don’t know what to do at this point. I’m running BadBehavior, and I’ve tried some other spam blocking plugins, but it doesn’t seem to work. I am still getting about 5 spam comments a day. Without BadBehavior running, I had over 50 spam comments in one day. What am I supposed to do? Manually looking through all these spam comments is annoying to say the least, many of them are disguised as real comments.

This is why I am seriously considering turning off comments on this blog. Don’t worry, comments will still function, however they will be on the forum instead of directly under the post. This first post is a trial to see how it works out. I could restrict comments to only wordpress registered users, or install other captchas for comments. However, I have been looking to expand my forum a little bit, and overall it’s easier to manage.

How is it easier? The captcha is a decent one already integrated into phpBB, which allows guests to post. I also think that the forum gives a clearer view of the discussion, rather than a bunch of comments.

You will be allowed to place your website url in your signature, if you register or in your comment if you post as a guest.

The posts will go like this, I will have a direct link to the forums at the bottom of every post, and at the forums comments will take place. No registration is required.  If I get zero comments I will consider rolling back, and trying out captchas on the comments. I know some of you may not like this, but realize it makes it easier for me.

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