Rubbish messages from spammers trying to put their links onto your website via your comments box is such a nuisance that I have decided to write a post about it. I get a sea of spam every day (or rather, I did, until I took matters in hand), and many of my clients have also complained about it. So how can we set about reducing it?

There are a number of steps we can take right away to diminish this problem.  First….

Do you want to allow comments…

…on your site at all?  Usually, you will want to make it possible for your readers to make comments, but if your site is a business showcase this may not be appropriate in any case.  If you don’t want comments, you can switch this off globally, which is a great solution (although oddly, I do find myself getting some spam comments on pages for which I have disallowed comments…)

Go to the Discussions area of your back end:

and to stop people being able to post comments, uncheck the third box under “Default Article Settings”. As it says, you can always override this setting for individual posts.

Enabling and disabling comments for particular pages or posts

You may want comments, but you don’t necessarily need them enabled everywhere on your site.  To enable or disable comments for a particular page or a particular post, go to the page in the back end where you edit a post. If you can’t see a box labelled Discussion underneath the post, go to where it says “Screen options” at the top right hand side of the screen.

Check Discussion in the small row of checkboxes that come up, and you’ll then see a box appear underneath the post.

Check Allow comments:

and Update the page.

If you are allowing comments, you will also want to make the Comment box visible under each post in the  back end so that you can easily check the comments that people leave. Do this by checking the Comments checkbox in the Screen Options area, as above.

Setting comments to be moderated before they appear

To check comments yourself before they are visible on the site, go back to the Discussion Settings page and check the checkbox labelled “An administrator must always approve the comment”. This obviously means that no rubbishy messages can appear on your site without you knowing, but it can take away the immediacy of visitor’s comments and discussions that develop between visitors.  However, if you can’t check your web site regularly for comment spam, then you will need to do this to stop spam appearing and being immediately visible.

To moderate comments, go to the Comments area of the back end and Approve, mark as Spam, or Trash each comment individually. (Recent comments also appear on your Dashboard so you see them right away when you log in.)

Email notification of comments

I set my sites to send me an email every time someone posts a comment, but this does result in a lot of extra email, so you may want to turn this off, again in the Settings > Discussions area.

Akismet

Akismet is a very useful plugin that helps spam proof your site.  It now comes bundled with WordPress.  Using Akismet, you can leave your comments un-modified and the system will identify what it thinks is spam, and what it thinks are genuine comments.  You still have to check the comments to see that it hasn’t missed any, but already your life is a lot easier.

First, since the plugin is bundled with WordPress and you therefore don’t have to install it, you can go straight to your Plugins area and activate it.

Then click on where it says “Sign up for an Akesmet API key”.

You’ll get taken to the Akismet site where you can get your API key – click the big blue button:

For a small business site, you have to pay $5 a month, or for a personal site you can choose to pay what you want.  I am only choosing to pay nothing in the example below so I can use it on a demo site to show you the steps!

Next, input your personal info and click Continue…

Click on “Take me back to my WordPress account”:

Not quite done actually, but nearly!  Check your email, and copy the Akismet key they will have sent you…

Back inside your WordPress back end, paste in the API key, click “Update options”, and you really are done.

Do remember that it is important that you check your Comments regularly, and “Mark as Spam” all the spam comments, so that Akismet can learn to perform better.

Installing a CAPTCHA plugin

A CAPTCHA is a system where the person leaving a message or a comment has to type a word or series of letters and numbers into a box before their message or comment can be left.  I have recently installed a plugin called Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam which puts a CAPTCHA next to my comments boxes (see below). You have to install it manually, which is just a question of uploading the plugin to your site by FTP (as per the instructions on the WordPress site). Here’s the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/peters-custom-anti-spam-image/installation/. I’ve found it’s made a big difference…

Good luck with your anti-spam techniques and do leave me some comments if you find other solutions or have any questions…