What Is The Best Way To Avoid Spams In Your Website?

[rvalkass 5]

Although this definitely is an efficient tool against spam, I have to disagree with using Captcha, reCAPTCHA or 1+1 assignments when letting the users comment.
Quite simply, my theory is that you want to make the user's commenting process easier, not more difficult. If they want to leave a few words of courage (or complain about something ) on your site, you don't want them to quit because they've entered the reCAPTCHA words wrong.

True. Which is why you need a balance making sure that computers cannot answer the CAPTCHA, yet humans can with no trouble at all. As computer OCR technology has advanced, traditional CAPTCHAS became a bit too complex and obtuse for humans to reliably get correct. The "What colour is an orange?" and "Which of these is not an animal: rabbit, shoe, dog?" type of CAPTCHA is easy to answer for a human, and doesn't require the sort of squinting and deciphering a traditional CAPTCHA now requires, yet computers can't process the natural language effectively. If a user is only posting one comment then let them post without signing up, and use a CAPTCHA to prevent spam. If they create an account, make them fill out one CAPTCHA, then remember that the account is a confirmed human. Spammers can get around this by having humans create accounts and complete the first CAPTCHA, but it is a big deterrent to them compared to other sites which are easier targets.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Chances are, if they enter the keyword wrong the first time; they aint' coming back. Unless they REALLY want to know and/or comment something.

I completely agree with this statement. I find CAPTCHA to be one of the worst things ever created. It harasses legitimate people more than spammers (there are scripts you can get now that will automatically fill in CAPTCHA's when they come up, so spammers still aren't really hindered).

[The Simpleton 2]

using reCAPTCHA and other techniques might seem irritating but nowadays people are used to finding them wherever they go so it won't be anything new. Bots find it difficult to auto-fill the more confusing captcha codes so it would still be a good idea to implement these. I had a bunch of spam comments on my WP blog as well. I didn't do anything to get rid of them but I think I would have chosen to implement reCAPTCHA.

[mahesh2k 0]

Well i prefer reCAPTCHA to be last solution if you're getting more spam comments which are not getting detected by most of the plugins. Other than recaptcha you can still try these plugins.- Akismet- Spam karma- WP-HASHCASHThese three plugins will wipe out most of the spam comments and you'll hardly need captcha. But higher your page rank more chances of comment spam. There are even some comment jobs on microworkers where people pay to spam on blogs and site. Though they claim to post legitimate comments but if anyone is paying someone to make comment by carrying a signature link or profile link. Then i consider those type of comments as spam. Such spammers can be only limited by recaptcha plugins. As human user they get irritated with captcha attempts. There is not proper black-hate bots for recaptcha so it always takes time. You'll find less comments on blogs with recaptcha enabled. If you're posting article on blog that doesn't require any discussion on topic then you can close the comments. Many times spammers randomly choose site or blog page so you can avoid such spammers by turning off comments on your blog posts. See if there is any wordpress plugins which turns off comments after 90 days or any limited day period.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Well i prefer reCAPTCHA to be last solution if you're getting more spam comments which are not getting detected by most of the plugins. Other than recaptcha you can still try these plugins.
- Akismet
- Spam karma
- WP-HASHCASH

These three plugins will wipe out most of the spam comments and you'll hardly need captcha. But higher your page rank more chances of comment spam. There are even some comment jobs on microworkers where people pay to spam on blogs and site. Though they claim to post legitimate comments but if anyone is paying someone to make comment by carrying a signature link or profile link. Then i consider those type of comments as spam. Such spammers can be only limited by recaptcha plugins. As human user they get irritated with captcha attempts. There is not proper black-hate bots for recaptcha so it always takes time. You'll find less comments on blogs with recaptcha enabled.

If you're posting article on blog that doesn't require any discussion on topic then you can close the comments. Many times spammers randomly choose site or blog page so you can avoid such spammers by turning off comments on your blog posts. See if there is any wordpress plugins which turns off comments after 90 days or any limited day period.

Disabling the comments isn't really an option. You brought up something that's very true -- they choose random pages. But the pages they choose are always the ones with high SERP's as well. The problem with choosing to downgrade (I classify having comments available on some, and not on the most popular, a downgrade of your popular pages) is that it may push users away. People like to get their input in. Whether or not someone else will even read it is irrelevant. It's just the voice that matters.

Edit : I do like the idea of turning them off after x time, though.
Edited July 12, 2010 by rpgsearcherz (see edit history)

[mahesh2k 0]

I have seen that plugin on one of the popular blog. I don't know it could be either copyblogger or problogger i guess not sure. The comment system on the blog posts turn off automatically after say 60-90 days. Maybe custom plugin developed by those bloggers or likely to be commercial plugin. For trendy blog posts and topic that plugin will definitely help cause such pages die in terms of traffic but gain a lot of PR. This is the reason spam bot search for page and attempt to comment. I'll see if i can get link to that plugin. If i don't get it then i'll ask this to one of blog forums or on blog as comment lol. Daniel scoco of dailyblogtips usually answers such question immediately and i'm sure he knows about this type of plugin. Just let me check if it's there.

[Little Asterisk 1]

I have seen that plugin on one of the popular blog. I don't know it could be either copyblogger or problogger i guess not sure. The comment system on the blog posts turn off automatically after say 60-90 days. Maybe custom plugin developed by those bloggers or likely to be commercial plugin. For trendy blog posts and topic that plugin will definitely help cause such pages die in terms of traffic but gain a lot of PR. This is the reason spam bot search for page and attempt to comment.
I'll see if i can get link to that plugin. If i don't get it then i'll ask this to one of blog forums or on blog as comment lol. Daniel scoco of dailyblogtips usually answers such question immediately and i'm sure he knows about this type of plugin. Just let me check if it's there.

It's not a plugin, Wordpress has this integrated in its back-end.

You should go somewhere in the settings, I believe Reading or Writing, and then check "Automatically close comments after x days", and replace the x (which is 14 by default, I believe) with 60 or 90, or some other number.