3 ways to avoid spam comments on WordPress
Since I’ve started posting articles on this blog, I was assaulted by comment spammers or spam trackbacks.I am tired of this and I’ve decided to search a few methods to avoid spam commenting that will help me to easely sort spam comments by the others and I’ve found a few ways to reduce spam comments that might be also useful for you :
- Firstly you can start by installing Askimet Plugin, that is considered the best wordpress plugin for reducing comment spamming on wordpress blogs.This plugin checks each comment,pingback or trackback that is sent to your blog and sort them automatically.This is the firts plugin that I’m installing on my new blogs.Using Askimet , you can see a stats page, where you can check the amount of spam comments sent everyday.
- A second step to avoid spam comments is closing comments on older posts.You can do this by accesing you dashboard and then going to Settings.There you need to click on “Discussion” and you check the box for “Automatically close comments on articles older than…”.You can close comments for articles older than 90 days, because some readers may read your blog after a few days and you need to allow them to comments on your blog, so 90 days is a good period of time for all you readers to comment on your blog.
- And the last method that I’ve used is a custom wordpress function to ban empty referrers.Spammers are not visiting your website to post comments, so you can use this principle to reduce the number of spam comments.To do this, you need to visit your dashboard and then you go to “Theme editor”.There you select the theme that you’re using on your blog and go to “functions.php”.Once you’re there, you need to copy this code there :
<?php
function verify_comment_referer() {
if (!wp_get_referer()) {
wp_die( __('You cannot post comment at this time, may be you need to enable referrers in your browser.') );
}
}
add_action('check_comment_flood', 'verify_comment_referer');
?>
This is not an article for advanced bloggers , but I tought that will be useful for newbies or any other blogger that is trying to drastically reduce the number of spam comments on his blog.
If you like my articles, please follow me on @niceblogger .
Related articles
- WordPress & Spams (mydestiny2011.com)
- What is Social Spam? (And How to Avoid Creating It) [INFOGRAPHIC] (blogs.constantcontact.com)
- Askimet Ate My Spam or, Try It, You’ll Like It (rantravewrite.com)
6 Responses to “3 ways to avoid spam comments on WordPress”
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Is it a good idea to close comments on older blog posts?? You know what sometimes it takes much time to find old articles (which are valuable) and your readers may be interested to comment on it to appreciate your work or else they may have few queries regarding that article. Then how can you satisfy him if you close it just to stop the spam?
Rahul kuntala recently posted..25 Blog Tips I Learned In Blogging
In 90 days, I think that your regular readers will have enought time to comment on your article … don’t you think ?
No.. I’m speaking about TIMELESS content. It will not end within 90days search. Even you may get comments on any of your killer articles after 2 years. What you say?
Rahul kuntala recently posted..25 Blog Tips I Learned In Blogging
Yes i think its really good idea to close comment on older post. Because in my experience i saw most of spammer target on those article which is old and which has pr.
Amit Shaw recently posted..3 Things That You Can Do To Increase Your CTA
With my blogsites… i closed comment for there are spammers. Which i really hate. So it is better to close comment to prevent spam comments.
bilal recently posted..Time Management For Entrepreneurs – Developing Skills, Techniques and Tools
Thanks for this. We started our Blog a little over a month ago and then installed Akismet after two weeks after that. I have been bowled over by the sheer volume of automated spam comments, it is stunning! I had no idea that spammers were as active as they are, it must be a huge time overhead on large well known blogs. Thanks for the additional two tips above, anything we can do to reduce comment spam is time well saved!
Gary recently posted..Simplicity Classic Wedding Invitation and Stationery