One of the gravest problems that face bloggers today is the fact that with the increased popularity of blogs, the increase in spamming has also been phenomenal. Blogs are today the new rage of the internet, with everyone owning a blog as a medium of free expression. However, the spammers try and exploit most features of these blogs including the fact that most of these blogs are unprotected and free. These features help the spammers since they provide an easy and free platform for the spammers to promote and advertise their own products and websites.
For the blogger, these spam become impossible to remove since it is not possible to manually check every comment and then delete the spam ones. Spammers leave many messages every day, sometimes even multiple messages. Hence one needs an automated mechanism to delete and work with spam. Most of the plugins provided by the WordPress platform work well for the basic purpose but don’t tend to work as well when dealing with a barrage of spam. Hence we need to look at other plugins for better spam protection.
The best plugin for that purpose is the new and improved WordPress Hash Cash where the users are required a proof-of-work in order to confirm that the website was indeed viewed by some browser and not by an automated machine. It provides the admin with three different recourses for comments. The admin can either push the comment into a manual moderation queue or into the default Akismet queue which is the default mechanism. Or if the admin feels, the option of deleting the comment is also open.
This plugin helps the real user who is often harassed with spam plugins refusing to post real comments. Under this plugin, even if the user fails the JavaScript test, the ultimate decision is left to the owner of the blog and he is free to do whatever he wants with the comment. It also helps the user prevent trackback spam by comparing the IP of the trackback URL with the sender’s IP and by looking in the trackback URL for a link back to the concerned post.
Additionally, the same plugin can protect the sign up page of your blog from dummy automated profiles. The one drawback of this plugin is the fact that it requires JavaScript to post a comment. Although most people do have JavaScript, it will not allow anyone to post a comment who doesn’t have JavaScript.
