53 New Spam Comments.. Phew, That's Good!

When you start a blog on any topic it can be AGES before you get picked up by the search engines.

If you’re main traffic strategy is to receive as much search engine traffic as possible then one sure way to know you’re starting to have some success (beside the numbers of course), is an increase in spam comments.

I love getting spam on new blogs. It excites me! Because if I’m getting spam, it means my articles are popular enough for them to bother.

So, when I logged into my computer hardware reviews blog Hardware With Byte this morning I was pleasently surprised to see 53 new spam comments waiting there for me. It seriously did put a smile on my face and I found myself thinking, am I the only demented one who likes this?

Of course the whole cleaning up the mess part is my least favourite task resulting from this discovery, but with just two WordPress plugins I’ve found it’s actually not that hard.

Akismet

Akismet is the native WordPress anti-spam plugin and it does a brilliant job. I’ve found it to be around 98%+ accurate in identifying spam messages here on Code My Own Road and this increases over time as I train it to spot legitimate messages that get mistakenly categorised as spam.

Invisible Captcha

The only other plugin that I use is a little known plugin called Invisible Captcha by Andrey Sorvin.

This light little plugin serves one purpose and that’s to stop automated spam robots dead in their tracks.

Captcha might indicate to use that your users would have to input some stupid characters in order to post a comment. Untrue, Invisible Captcha put a hidden captcha field on your page that robotic spammers cannot see.

This has the wonderful affect of people not being able to post to your wp-comments.php file without having come from the specific page that the comment is due to land on.

If the hidden captcha is blank then those robots attacking your wp-comments.php file won’t be able to post on your pages. Brilliant simplicity and superb programming.

The page is in Russian (I think), but you can download your copy here.

Yet Another Necessary Evil

Spam is a pain in the ass, but it’s got it’s good sides. For starters, it lets your know when you’re doing something right. I consider it flattery, but I know I’m not normal in thinking this.

To me it’s part of any project that you’re going to get attacked. Be it spam, or people attacking the idea, your people attacking your time taking you away from your project. Stick with it, and see it through. Add value and stop worrying so much about what other people think.

Many people get quite upset when they see their precious baby websites getting attacked by spammers, but it’s really not that bad. If you are vigilant, and protect yourself adequately you’ll be hitting that “Empty Spam Folder” button with confidence and smiling the whole time.

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