If you’re a WordPress user, you probably noticed an option at Settings -> Discussion, which states “Before a comment appears, comment author must have a earlier approved comment.” This was pretty greatly the margin of our challenging-spam events at this time, and while not a single bit of spam owing to it owing to, the sheer number of pending comments (nearly all spam) were driving us nuts. A few days ago, we shifted gears with tremendous results, and I though you folks might be interested.
We resolute to do away with the higher than background and rely entirely on Akismet, Cookies for Comments, and the built-in moderation list and blacklist at Settings -> Discussion for any that snuck owing to. Former to this change, we had an average of 5 pending comments each hour, and an average of 4.8 of persons were spam. Now, we don’t have to mind pending comments, and we only see an average of 2 comments an hour making it owing to. Of course, an average of 1.5 of these are spam, but that’s still one heck of an improvement, and we should eventually knock that down with the moderation list and blacklist. So far, the compensation outweigh the few that are making it owing to.
- As mentioned, we have greatly a reduced amount of posted comments to deal with now than here were pending comments before.
- Checking each comment as it comes in fleet us to accept extra comments that really ride the line between legitimate and spam comments. In the past, we would have probably margin-spammed these when checking the pending comments.
- Legitimate commenters can see their comments at once without coming up for us to get to them.
A word of notification about the moderation list and blacklist. They will both block anything that matches the string of letters you enter. So, be mindful of collateral destruction when blocking a word. For example, one of the most commonly blocked words is “cialis,” but this will also block “socialist.” The blacklist will involuntarily mark any matching comment as spam, so use the moderation list for any words that may maybe be used legitimately.
If you find yourself interacting too greatly with spam on a daily basis, it might be time to consider a new strategy.