Spam 2.0
The amount of comment spam has been rising rapidly, even with efforts to reduce the tide. As a result, I weighed up the benefits of comments (again).
I still see the benefits in letting people comment on posts, so comments will stay, but I need a way of reducing the amount of comment spam. Playing around with Wordpress plug-ins, I’m going to try something different - a web service.
Akismet essentially outsources the problem to someone else. Free for personal use, signing up is a matter of getting a wordpress.com username, which supplies a key.
Some stats from their site, as of January 22, 2007:
601,615,558 spams caught so far
113,265 so far today
94% of all comments are spam
Given the recent comments I’ve seen, the 94% number is, if anything, low.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Hi Geoff,
I’ve been using Akismet for more than a year now, and it’s nothing short of brilliant.
My spam comment problem has basically gone away. I might see 5 spam comments a week in a bad week, while Akismet silently bins a few thousand without my intervention.
Cheers,
Andy
January 22nd, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Geoff,
I am in the same boat as Andy. Akismet has been wonderful.
Geoff
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m sold!
January 26th, 2007 at 5:23 am
I’ll third what the above have all said.
I might even start posting again too…