Comment Gatekeeper
Posted on June 18, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Due to an unusually high number of spam comments getting past the filters, and having no desire to moderate 100 comments a day, I’ve installed the WP-Gatekeeper plugin. What this means is that, in order to leave a comment, you will have to answer a question to which the answer is obvious (example: What colour is an orange?). If you have a WordPress account, and you’re logged in, you won’t be required to answer a question. This should be the case for the majority of you, anyway.
I hope no one minds having to go through this extra step in order to leave comments. I wish I didn’t have to implement this kind of security measure but, like I said, I’ve had between 40-50 spam comments show up in the moderation panel in a period of about 4 hours last night. Over the course of an entire day, I think it would be even worse.
It’s mostly older posts that attract this type of spam, and I’ve considered turning off comments on posts older than 30 days, but I do get valuable comments on old posts from time to time, so I’d rather not turn them off if I can help it. Hopefully, this new plugin will mean that I can still let real human users post comments on old posts, but won’t have to worry about spam bots hitting them.
If anyone has problems with the plugin not allowing them to leave comments, send me an email at adam[dot]snider[at]gmail[dot]com, and let me know.
Comments
4 Responses to “Comment Gatekeeper”
Leave a Reply
The akismet plugin has been more than enough for me, then again it’s early days still so I may need more in future.
Do you mean an account here or on wordpress.com?
My understanding is that a WordPress.com or WordPress.org account will allow you to bypass the question when leaving comments.
Akismet used to be enough for me as well. I’m not sure why it’s not doing the trick anymore.
Well, I have akismet set up to check my girlfriend’s guestbook comments, and some spam has been leaking through. It’s ridiculously blatent spam as well, so something must be up.
The ones affecting me were super obvious as well. They were of the “xfjakdfjkldahfkdhafdfh” variety.