How can you fight spam on your blog?
Saturday, November 15th, 2008MT 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.