Tin
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03:40:08 am on October 28, 2005 | # |
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about spam, and rightfully so. Ever since I switched from Movable Type to WordPress, I’ve tried to keep up with the latest and greatest WordPress has to offer, including all of the third-party plugins and hacks people write for it. WordPress has a pretty active community, so it’s always exciting to see what people have cookin’ for it. Spam prevention is no different, and several new solutions have been written since my last post about it.
It’s worth noting that there are different types of spam. I don’t want to bore you with details, but for the typical blog, you have to worry about comment spam, trackback spam, and referrer spam. There are solutions for all three types. However, a lot of spam solutions wait for the comment to be posted before it does anything to it. This wastes bandwidth and database space. If you pay for your hosting like I do, you don’t want that to happen.
I’m not saying I’ve done a whole lot of research in this area, but if you use any kind of blogging tool or CMS, I highly recommend Bad Behavior, a spam stopping solution written by a guy named Michael Hampton. This thing stops spam before it even hits your website, meaning no wasted bandwidth and no database entries to clear out. Read his explanation of how it works, as he explains it very well.
Michael also contributed to a new anti-spam plugin called Akismet, which is being touted as the ultimate spam killer. While Akismet is very effective, it does not stop spam before it hits your website. Thus, Bad Behavior should be used as your first line of defense, while Akismet waits in the back, in the rare case some spam slips by. He explains why both should be used in conjunction with each other on his WordPress.com blog.
In short, if you’re a WordPress blogger, I highly recommend Bad Behavior, and if you want, use Akismet for that extra-added firepower. However, to use Akismet, you need a WordPress.com API key, which means you need a WordPress.com account.
Although Bad Behavior is offered as a WordPress plugin, it can be adapted to work for any system. Akismet has future plans to support other blogging systems as well, so non-WordPress users can enjoy the benefits of these two plugins.
jens 10:43 am on July 4, 2006 | #
It seems that Bad Behavior will stop my SPAM-ING Problems for my comment script. I think I am gonne try it out. Thanks for the advice..
Greets Jens ( http://www.isoliert.de/forums/ )