Spamtastic Advice for Bloggers!
This is going to be one of my shortest posts, but an important one to all bloggers. I just finished doing regular maintenance on all my blogs and was amazed at the tremendous increase the amount of Spam during the past week. I had over 200 spam comments on this blog alone. That is an increase of 600% over the typical amount of spam I receive.
Sure, I could give the typical (and critical) advice that all bloggers need a top notch spam blogging plugin. But here is some equally important advice:
Don’t just delete spam. Be sure it is tagged as spam!
Askimet, the plugin I use (and recommend) finds 99.9+% of all spam on my blogs, but occasionally something slips through. And when it does, you should be sure that it’s identified as spam according to the procedures of your software. Doing so (at least with Askimet) added that commentor to the larger spammer list shared by everyone using that software. As part of the blogging community, you are doing your part to clean up the Internet graffiti (well, graffiti minus the artistic value).
UPDATE: Wow, there were 44 new spam comments since I wrote this post 10 hours ago! Have you seen an increase in spam on your blog?
[PhotoCredit:BennyYap]
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Comments
Good advise, Jim. I have solely depended on Askimet to fight those spams and I’m quiet satisfied with its performance so far.
I had it without Askimet on another blog just to measure its effectiveness and you’d not believe the amount of spams I’m receiving each day.
Yan
Yeah you are absolutely right, Jim. It’s one of those things you can’t manage a blog without. It’s just so indispensable I couldn’t find anything as effective as Askimet.
Yan
Yeah, really akismet meets the purpose. I have tried it and it works fine. Spam should be handled the way it is done by Akisket.
Great Work, Great Post, Stay away from spams, always.
Funny - I have been using Akismet for years and never realised the “community” aspect that tagging a commenter as a spammer helps other Wordpress owners. What a nice thought - I will adopt this policy from now on!
Jim, my little blog is new and I get several spams per day, I believe they are from the same source. Askimet catches them, but I have just been deleting. How do I identify it as spam? I didn’t know that could be done. Thanks for the tip.