WordPress is a powerful content management system which is used by millions of users to create websites. Although it is, you never ever thought that there would be a chance for spam to play with
Before we talk about the preventive measures, we should know what is a comment spam.
What are Spam comments?
Spam comments are comments which are done purposefully to get a back-link to the commentator’s website.The main aim of the spammers are to boost the traffic to their own website. Spam comments are always a headache to WordPress users. It affects the FAQs, forms, forums, discussions forms, comment box, etc.
What is it important to reduce the number of spam comments? Are they really bugs?
It is better to avoid the spam comments else, it can use your database space and makes your website down.
We usually think ‘Disable comments’ option is just enough to stop the comments commenting in to your website. The fact is, just a disabling is not enough to fix your problem entirely.
Apart from disabling, there are some other secured preventive measures to handle spam comments
How to handle Spam Comments?
To handle a spam is not easy because each and everyday the number of spammers coming to our sites will be a lot. Don’t worry! I hope you are not late. I hope this methods will help you to completely destroy your comment spams and make your site secure.
Method:1
Change Discussion Settings for more security purpose
Steps:
- Go to Dashboard settings
- Click Discussion
- Tick on ‘Comment author must have a previously approved comment’.
- Comment must be manually approved [optional]
This features helps to secure your WordPress site by approving the comment from
Method 2:
Install WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins
According to Wikipedia, Akismet is a spam filter that filters the spam comments, information in the contact forms and trackbacks. In addition to this, Akismet is a recommended plugin for WordPress websites.
This anti-spam method uses Akismet web services to check whether the comments is a spam or not.
Akismet automatically checks the comments and filter the one into spam.
The status history is the history in Akismet that is notified with spam and non-spam comments which you can check any time.
Method 3:
According to captcha.net, the abbreviation of Captcha is “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. CAPTCHA is a program that is developed to protect websites or blogs against spam comments by generating code may can be a distorted code or word that humans can read. The addition of re-captcha makes the website secure by stopping the enter of spambots.
Method 4:
According to wpbeginner, Honeypot is used to prevent spam bots. It checks whether the commenter is a spam or not, and gives a tricky challenge that does not allow the non-human users to enter the comments quickly.
How to use Honey pot
Steps:
- Install wp-fighter plugin
- Check ‘Honeypot’ box
After the installation, access the ‘wp-plugin fighter’ plugin from the settings option which is on your dashboard. Review the options and check the one is required.
It also has a ‘Timestamp Protection’ which makes the users to read a post before posting a comment. If a user tries to enter the comment quickly, timestamp protection stop those spams by popping up a javascript script.
After honeypot is enabled, the wp-fighter plugin shows a hidden field in the text area which are invisible to humans and visible to spambots. In this way honeypot can catch some spam bot flies.
Overview
I hope this article is simple enough for you to follow. Now a days, Spambots increases day by day. It is not as easy as you think to protect your sites. So, try to use the recommended options to fight against it. I hope this article clearly helped you to travel through the definition, advantages and disadvantages and the preventive measures of spam comments.