I say “NO!” to blog spam

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I’ve been getting a lot of comments on this blog, which will never see the light of day. I made the decision of moderating comments to avoid people posting objectionable content, but I confess that it didn’t strike me as likely that some of that objectionability would be spam.

Interesting concept this one of “blog spam”. A comment listing some bogus email and a URL that shoots you off onto sites that sell counterfeit Chanel bags, or chiropractic services in the U.K., or something of lewd nature. The marketing concept is not totally absurd, if you would assume that the spam would be posted on high-traffic blog, where people actually would care to read comments to posts.

There are two flies in the ointment of those trying to spam this blog, though. First, as Gandalf said to the Balrog, “You shall not pass!” – comments are moderated here. Second, come on, do your really think this is a high-traffic blog?

5 thoughts on “I say “NO!” to blog spam”

  1. Chris

    Have you tried the Akismet spam filter plugin? I hear it works pretty well, might cut down on some moderating you have to do.

  2. Wow, I finally get a comment that’s worth approving. It also shows that someone is reading, what is particularly encouraging since I enjoy writing 🙂 Thanks, Chris!

  3. As of 5 minutes ago, I activated the Akismet plugin (it was installed all along and I had forgotten to activate it!), got an API key (free for individual/hobby websites), and it’s now installed and running. Couldn’t be any easier to set up, now I hope it’s also effective. Again, thanks for the comment, Chris!

    • Chris

      Nice, no problemo… I’ve got the RSS in Mail so I can keep up (though that might not help your pageviews… I hear the solution to that is to Syndicate the beginning of a post so that I have to visit the page to get the whole post)

      Another replies tip might be to try to get “Sign in with twitter/facebook” working, that way when someone comments, they can choose to publish in to their friends and followers.

      Lastly, are you moderating on the iPad? WordPress has an iPhone app, but I’m not sure about native iPad.

  4. Its a real problem these days. Akismet works pretty well for my blogs, but its not perfect. Generally i will let one link in if there is a contextual post along with it. No harm in that really. Oh yea and Gandalf said “NONE SHALL PASS” not “You shall not pass!”…sorry im a nerd.

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