Success!
Just a quick update to say “hoorah”, “success” and various shades of “awesome”! I woke up this morning to only 3 spam comments, which is greatly reduced from the 20-200 (!!!) I’ve been receiving of late. I added a line of code to mail me any comment, plus the score, of anyone who got registered as spam and within minutes I had an inbox full of spam notifications. (So it’s definitely working, and it wasn’t just coincidence that I got little spam overnight.)
The checks are minor and I doubt they’ll add anything to the processing time of comments (in fact, most of the checks were already there — I just added a score to them). Things like the amount of time ‘http://’ occurs, whether an attempt to use HTML was noticed, comment length, profanity and blacklist check, etc… although only triggered once (if at all) by normal commenters, they all add up when the spammers try.
I’ll probably update later on/this weekend with a proper entry… :P
Shari said:
On 24 Nov at 10:59 am
Hoorah, then! Congratulations on successfully reducing the spams. Oh man, you’re really are a goddess when it comes to coding. I hate you. :D Wish I have your brain and patience when it comes to these things. Anyway, take care.
Xeronia said:
On 24 Nov at 1:45 pm
Sweet!
Kelly said:
On 24 Nov at 1:55 pm
Congratulations! Perhaps you could release a WordPress version ;-) Only kidding. :)
Hillarie said:
On 24 Nov at 2:24 pm
Congrats! You really are a genius…keep up the amazing work!
Amelie said:
On 24 Nov at 3:11 pm
@Kelly: I’m sure Akismet works in a similar way… I know that a plugin called Kitten’s Spaminator that I used to use before Akismet definitely worked like that. Not sure if it works for WP 2.x, but if you’re interested in the score system, that plugin will do it for you. :)
Tiddley said:
On 24 Nov at 4:04 pm
Wooyay! It sounds ever so clever of you, Jemmiepoos. :)
Aithnea said:
On 24 Nov at 8:03 pm
@Kelly: I use Spam Karma and it works something like that. It sends you spam digests daily telling you how much spam it is catching. It’s a really cool plugin for WP. @Jem: Congrats on getting it to work Jem. You are a PHP ninja.
Nan said:
On 24 Nov at 9:45 pm
Congratulations on your success fighting spam!
Ellie said:
On 25 Nov at 2:08 am
Alright! My blog has AKISMET so selling enlargers and stuff like that probably won’t work anymore. :D Yeah, you’re a PHP ninja.
Kelly said:
On 25 Nov at 1:34 pm
@ Amelie: Thanks for the thumbs up about Akismet :P @ Aithnea: And thanks for the thumbs up about Spam Karma :) @ Ellie: I’m still giggling at the idea that Jem is a “php ninja”.
Sabrina said:
On 25 Nov at 4:04 pm
I resolved the spam issue by moving to Vox, but I applaud your efforts.
Elea said:
On 25 Nov at 9:58 pm
I believe it’s only appropriate for this entry to be commented back with a “Hoorah! Success! Awwwwesome!” :p I’m using Akismet to block spam right now, and I am amazed by the number of bots which continually try to attack WordPress…
Malin said:
On 26 Nov at 2:34 pm
Congrats! Muste be good to have won the fight :P I have Akismet and so far it’s working good, it takes everything. But I wish I wouldn’t get any spam at all. Yeah, it’s wishful thinking :P
Grant Mc said:
On 26 Nov at 9:20 pm
That id great jem. Well done.
Bryan said:
On 28 Nov at 10:35 am
I havent really graduated into blogdom yet. I am struggling to figure out how to leave people a email address they can click on without blowing my email quotas up with spam. I have about 5 websites and 15 email addresses. LOL Any ideas?
Aimee said:
On 28 Nov at 6:11 pm
Exciting! That’s something to be very proud of, considering successfully and flawlessly blocking all spam seems to be just about as futile as successfully and flawlessly curing all forms of cancer and AIDs. But just like curing diseases, I have faith we’ll get there eventually. :)