While allowing comments on your blog is a valuable way to keep content fresh (and keep search engines busy re-indexing your blog) the issue of comment spam is one of the most frustrating aspects of blog ownership.
If you’re a blog owner then I’m sure you’re well acquainted with comment spammers… all those annoying commenters who dump comments filled with links that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the content of your blog, viagra links, online pharmacies, pornography etc. Life as a blog owner would be much nicer without these scumbags (Oops, did I say that? Schlap my wrist! LOL)
But did you know that many of those comments have not even been left by real, physical, human visitors? That’s right, a high proportion of those comments are actually automated by insidious computer programs that range around dumping spam comments on every blog it can find. Now THAT is truly annoying!
Thankfully there are methods to help stop comment spam. One of the best wordpress plugins to help stop comment spam is ‘Botproof Captcha’. For those who don’t know a CAPTCHA is defined as a ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’. It’s one of those boxes where you have to type in the displayed characters/numbers before your information is submitted. If you’re on the individual post page right now just look below the post to the comment section to see Botproof Captcha in action.
Most CAPTCHA’s these days are completely useless as bots (computer programs) find them easy to crack. Botproof Captcha is different. Botproof captcha uses dynamic images that shift and change to make it impossible for bots using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to recognize letter and number patterns.
In the words of botproof.com;
Our captchas are made up entirely of “noise”. And it is constantly moving, so no one frame has the complete symbol displaying. Because the human mind is so much more complex than a computer, humans are able to make out the numbers and letters, even though they are moving and changing. This is impossible for any current bot program to do.
I should define the term ‘noise’ here also. Noise refers to the grids, squiggly lines, dots etc that are part of a captcha image. These parts are designed to confuse bots. Unfortunately, they no longer work.
It should be noted that while Botproof Captcha can be installed from within your wordpress dashboard you will need to go to botproof.com to sign up for a free account. It’s like adding a google analytics plugin, you need to have a google analytics account before the plugin works. To add the plugin via your wordpress dashboard simply go to ‘plugins>add new’ in the left hand navigation menu and search for botproof captcha
To provide you with an idea of how effective this plugin is, when I installed it I went from receiving 10-20 spam comments per day to 1-2. Pretty impressive huh? For this reason it is on my list of best wordpress plugins.
Check out my post about another excellent plugin that lets you ban repeated human comment spammers at Best WordPress Plugins – WP Ban. These two plugins combined will dramatically reduce the amount of comment spam your blog receives making your task as a blogger much more enjoyable.
Good luck in your efforts to stop comment spam using the best wordpress plugins around!
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