For those who manage WordPress/CMS/forum sites that have comments enabled...

 

What anti-spam measures you use?

 

How many spam comments do you delete every day, if any?

 

Do you change your anti-spam plugin often, or create/renew your own?

I use this plugin to stop comment spam https://wordpress.org/plugins/anti-spam/

 

I don't seem to need to delete spam comments but that may just be because I don't get many visitors. I haven't had a problem with it so I don't change it.

 

I use the Contact Form 7 plugin with the Contact Form 7 Honeypot plugin to try to stop spam emails.

Askimet. Although try to generally avoid plugins, many put your site at risk in terms of security.

My primary CMS, ExpressionEngine, has a spam module built in and covers comments, forum posts and member registrations. For older versions of EE I usually reach for https://www.putyourlightson.net/snaptcha which covers just about every type of form.

Or perhaps use disqus if on WP? I usually don't advocate 3rd party services for basic functionaity, but I find disqus does a very good job when it comes to spam prevention. Plus, more or less, it has become the norm nowadays

I managed my company blog and it definitely is a bit of work. The first thing you should do is take steps to manage how your WordPress installation handles user comments. Ask yourself questions like

• How much identification is required to comment: Will you allow anyone to comment, or only registered users? Do comment authors need to provide their name and email, or can they leave comments anonymously?
• How comments are approved: Will you protect your blog by holding all comments for moderation, or can a commentator come back and leave additional comments to their heart’s content once their first post has been approved?

You can also use a plugin like Akismet, or an alternate comment system like Disqus, which deals with the issue of unregistered users commenting (a big source of spam). No matter what you do, spam is going to get through and you're going to have to take the time to deal with it and keep your comment section clean. I wrote a post that offers a bit more advice on this issue, feel free to check it out. https://www.wiredtree.com/blog/managing-your-comment-section-on-wordpress-three-steps-you-need-to-take/

Askimet. Although try to generally avoid plugins, many put your site at risk in terms of security.

 

Yep. I had to delete Sweet Captcha from a lot of sites I managed, due to it inserting ads. Usually I keep an eye on them to see if they change ownership, as that is a warning sign they might insert ads or other dodgy things.

 

I'm now using WP Bruiser (formerly Goodbye Captcha) for all my WP sites. Though for some, I have commenting entirely disabled if I (or the website manager) doesn't have time to maintain them.

 

I'm slightly against Disqus, because I don't think we should force legitimate users to sign up to another thing just to be able to leave a comment. I'm trying it out on one of my experimental websites, though. I may decide to use it if I think my target audience is savvy enough to already be using it.

I've had some good experiments using honey pot method, but I did make a function which I call spawn.

<php
// Checks the lapse time and returns false if it's too fast.
function spawnSecure($var) {
	$spawn = trim(stripslashes($var));
	$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
	$diff = strtotime($now) - strtotime($spawn);
	if($diff<=1) {
		return false; // Too quick
	} else {
		return true;
	}
}
?>

All you need is an extra hidden field in the form...

<input type="hidden" name="esent" value="<?php echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s'); ?>">

Then on process...

$spawn_date = trim($_POST['esent']);
if(!spawnSecure($spawn_date)) {
	// Then it's been less that 1 second.
}

This is a non intrusive method I have found works quite nicely, the clients who tested it found it stable enough against automated submissions.

Edited March 24, 201610 yr by BrowserBugs

I started experimenting with something like this last year, trying to detect how long form submissions are taking. Didn't get far, because work took over and I completely forgot about it - might revisit it this year (or copy your more likely )

Use Askimet plugin to control spam comments

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