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MT 3.3 offers a built-in spam protection plugin called SpamLookup. In addition to this plugin, there are several other options you can implement to help stem the tide of spam. Note that the spammers are constantly improving their methods to game the system, requiring constant vigilance on the part of the MT community to keep coming up with new ways to block them.

* SpamLookup
SpamLookup is a Movable Type plugin, developed by Brad Choate, that uses several techniques to identify spam, and then uses user-supplied choices to either moderate or block it. SpamLookup is an integrated part of MT 3.3, so if you have installed the latest version of MT, there is nothing more you need to install. SpamLookup utilizes several blacklist services to check incoming comments and trackbacks against known spammers. It allows you to either “junk” or moderate comments and trackbacks based on different settings for links and keywords. You can even “white list” domains or IP addresses. To adjust the settings on SpamLookup, simply open up your Plugins menu from the System Overview of your Movable Type editing window. Scroll to the bottom and select “Show Settings” from any of the SpamLookup modules. See Neil Turner’s suggestions on Making the Most of SpamLookup and David Philip’s SpamLookup’s Keyword Filter Explained for more information on how to best use this plugin.

* Akismet
Akismet is a distributed spam filtering service developed by the Wordpress community. According to the Akismet FAQ, the way it works is “When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.” MT developer Tim Appnel has created an MT plugin for Akismet (MT-Akismet) which can be downloaded from the Akismet website. Many have found Akismet to be more effective at catching spam than SpamLookup.

* Comment Challenge
Jay Allen’s Comment Challenge plugin requires a commenter to type a keyword into a separate field from the comment field in order for the comment cgi script to run. This plugin effectively halts automatic computer generated spam comments.

* Use a “Captcha”
A captcha is a security code that a commenter must enter in order for her comment to load. The benefit is that it screens out automated comment spam bots. The downside is that it keeps visually disabled people from easily contributing a comment. Arvind has released an SCode plugin to work with MT 3.2 - MT-SCode 1.0.

* Require approval before a comment posts
One way to ensure that your readers never have to see a spam message is that you personally approve comments before they are posted. MT3 has the comment moderation features built-in. (See Settings > Feedback > check “Immediate publish comments from No one”.)

Close old comments.
One way to cut down on blog spam is to reduce the opportunities by closing the ability to comment on blog posts older than X number of days. Mark Carey’s BlogJanitor plugin lets you do just that, and all automatically.

Google Analytics is a great program that can do a lot more than most people realize. Here are a few features that you may not know about:

* Capture internal search stats. This is a newer feature of Google Analytics and a very nice one. Not only can you see what a visitor put into your internal search box, but what page they were on when they made the search and what page they chose in the search results. Any internal search will work as long as it passes the search variable through the URL. Here’s a short video interview with Google’s Brett Crosby on some of those features.

* Filter out domains. Let’s say your Google Analytics code somehow got on another site and your stats were getting tainted with irrelevant data. No problem. You can create a filter to not count anyone from specific domains you add in. Oddly enough, you can also filter out your own domain so your stats flat line. Not a good idea to do that though.

* Track document downloads or specific links. Adding a small piece of JavaScript to any link will tell Google to track when someone clicks on that link. This works for PDFs, Word documents, email address’ and external links. It also works if you want to see which two links on the same page are generating more clicks. Even though they go to the same URL, you can tag one link as ‘link one’ and the other as ‘link two’ and Google will track the clicks separately for you. Bonus Tip: If you have a Wordpress blog, you can instantly tag all links across your blog with the Ultimate Google Analytics plugin.

* Export to Excel. For any newbies, this is a time saving feature. Just about any report can have the data exported to a CSV file which Excel can open. You can now stop copying and pasting most data out of Google Analytics and into Excel and save yourself some time.

* Filter yourself out. This feature is a must do for any company. Find your static IP address and then set up a filter so Google knows not to include traffic from your company network. This ensures that your stats are not inflated due to employee’s surfing habits. This also is something you should consider for any partner companies. If you have a web development, or SEO company who is constantly checking out the site, filter them out too.

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