WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: Does Your Site Look Spammy?

Does your site look spammy? How would you know whether or not your site looks spammy? It’s time for a spam check. Web design is hard, especially if you aren’t an expert. Yet, in many ways you are an expert if you are a fan of the web. You’ve seen enough sites to know the […]

The Secret Recipe of Comment Spam Comments

Mr. Louis Vuitton just sent me a message in my blog comments I’d like to share with you. I share this touching message because it is highly educational when it comes to the art of spam comments, and serves to remind us of why we love having Akismet, the best comment spam fighter, on our […]

Do Not Delete Comment Spam. Mark Spam as Spam.

Is comment spam one of the things that gets you down? Are you taking it personally? Are you confused by comment spam and how to handle it? I’ve been speaking at a variety of meetups lately on web publishing, blogging, and podcasting, and the topics often turn to managing comments and comment spam. “I’ve started […]

Comment Spam Alert: I Read a Similar Article

Bloggers should now be familiar with the blog comment spam ruse of “X wrote an interesting post” to lure us into thinking this is a legitimate trackback, and now comes “I read a similar article also named…” to lure us into thinking this comment is legitimate. As Tony Hung illustrated, the comment spammers use a […]

Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content

Last week, an article I wrote for the Blog Herald, Blogging Outside of Your Community By Not Blogging in Your Native Tongue, caught the attention of more than just the readers. It caught the attention of the staff of the Blog Herald by attracting a very unusual trackback from a new kind of copyright violating […]

When Akismet Goes Bad: What to do when Akismet starts spamming your own comments

The reason why I created Akismet Auntie Spam helper script was because I seem to have a problem few other people do — every couple of months Akismet decides that my own comments and trackbacks are spam. This is unforgivable and a fatal usability flaw in Akismet’s design. Comments and trackbacks from the blog admin should skip the spam check process. I challenge anyone who argues differently to have to deal with always having to double check if their own comments are marked as spam. The delay between posting a comment and it appearing in Akismet almost always assures that you will miss one or there will be an inordinate delay in responding to your commenters.

But enough of the ranting about my problems with Akismet. Here are two things you can do to help when Akismet is marking your own comments as spam.

Banning a WordPress Spammer With .htaccess

By John Pozadzides (“How the heck is that pronounced?!?”) Uugh. I’ve got this problem comment spammer. Today alone he posted over 1,000 comment spams on my blog. You can imagine how I felt about that. Did I mention I am a Marine (Semper Fi)! So, even though Akismet was doing it’s job, I was about […]

Fighting Comment Spam: WordPress Comments Mass Edit Mode

Every once in a while, the comment spammers win. Just a little. They use new techniques, new IP addresses, some method that slips by Akismet and other comment spam fighting tools. Your Comments Panel overflows with comment spam. After marking 10 or 20 as comment spam, your natural inclination is to fire off an angry […]

Checking WordPress for Comment Spam That Slips By You

A six month old post got a comment yesterday. Responding to the comment, I noticed a comment spam above it with obscene language in it. Specifically, a request for fetish sex. I was so embarrassed that this person had left a comment and saw that as the last comment. I’m so fussy about monitoring for […]

Weekly Digest: Guest Bloggers Galore, Theme Spam, Blog Scraping, and Personal Blogging

It’s been a week and a half of fabulous guest bloggers bringing some color and excitement to Lorelle on WordPress. Wow! And some babble about WordPress Themes with link spam and vulnerabilities that must be addressed, and blog scrapers stealing content from WordPress.com Blogs. And one of my guest bloggers begins a series on the […]

Battling Referrer Spam

By Michael Hampton Right around the time you realize that people you don’t know are actually reading your blog, you probably are going to start checking your stats to see where in the world they’re coming from. Your web host gave you a package like awstats or webalizer to generate nice statistics and graphs for […]

Fighting Registration Spam in WordPress

Most WordPress blogs are protected by the best anti-spam triangle of comment spam defenders: Bad Behavior, Spam Karma 2 and Akismet. However, little or nothing is available to help prevent registration spam. Registration spam differs from comment spam as it comes through the WordPress login form, not blog comments. WordPress blogs which require registration to […]

Comment Spammers Never Stop, Even When Your Blog is Down

Just a reminder. If you let your comment spam fighting stop for even a few seconds, comment spammers will get into your blog. As many users are upgrading to the newest version of WordPress, their comment spam fighting guard is down as WordPress Plugins must be deactivated during the upgrade, and sometimes a few glitches […]

Weekly Digest: Blog Silence Day, Comment Spam Brainstorming

Welcome to the Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress, a one-stop buffet of tips, tricks, and techniques on WordPress and blogging. Past issues can be found in the Weekly Digest category. For information on how to subscribe to this weekly digests of the events and activities on Lorelle on WordPress, check the bottom of this […]