Akismet the spam slayer
by Jean du Plessis
After implementing Akismet spam verification into our comments and trackbacks, I am glad to report that we have had a spam free environment.
So how effective has it been? Well in the last month our normal spam protection methods have been able to stop 1158 spam comments and 55 were able to get through (the 55 is the total of spam comments that were missed and valid comment submissions). Akismet was able to identify and block all the spam that came through. In addition to the spam comments it blocked, it also stopped a total of 2033 instances of trackback spam.
So here is a good recipe to protect your blog from spam comment and trackbacks:
1. Implement the methods discussed in An alternative to irritating CAPTCHAs
2. Check the comments for spam using Akismet
Note: You might ask why not bypass step 1 and just use Akismet? Well by adding step 1 you reduce the load by having to make the call to Akismet to check whether it is spam and thus saving critical system resources. In our example out of the 1213 comments that were submitted, we only had to make a call to Akismet 55 times.
With those two processes in place you should be able to enjoy a happy spam free environment.
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This is valuable knowledge Jean. With ever increasing spam submissions to every form, it's a serious challenge to keep spam out and the resources needed to to it down - and it looks like you're on top of it.
Well done.
Posted by Craig on 2007/05/04