Okay, everybody together now! “Spam, spam, spam, spam! Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!” Little did the Monty Python crew know back in 1970 that the tinned meat in their sketch would lend its name to one of our generation’s most aggravating first world problems: SPAM!
181 spam comments came in on one post today between 4:01 and 6:01 am this morning. And they’re still coming in now. Really? I didn’t know I was that popular, or that I had that many readers looking for the best places to buy “cheap cheap Chanel bag” (or Louis Vuitton, or Gucci, or Hermes, etc.). One comment just said “HIT”, and that’s kind of what I felt like doing when I saw this mess.
Sigh. I can’t turn off commenting, so I need to find a better anti-spam strategy. I really don’t want to have to put in some kind of captcha. I find the Google ones irritating and even though I think I can read and write English fairly well, Google disagrees and I almost always have to refresh the captcha and/or retry it once or twice. I worry that requiring a captcha will mean less comments, and I love getting real comments from real people.
After some research, I’ve installed a plug-in that promises to block the spam without any extra steps on my part or from my readers. Sounds almost too good to be true! But I’d really like to avoid requiring readers to check a box or type in a captcha, and I would prefer not to have to wade through hundreds of moderated comments to find the one or two genuine ones. So I’m going to give it a shot and see how it goes. I’ve posted some test comments and they seemed to make it through the filter okay, but if you do get an error when trying to leave a comment, please let me know via email (the mail icon at the top of the sidebar) or on Facebook.
For any bloggers out there, do you have any tips on how to handle spam? Please share with me! (Assuming my comments work of course!)
I used Askimet to filter out SPAM, and then just check the SPAM folder constantly to see if any legit comments went in there. Such a pain!! I hate SPAM 🙁
Thanks for the tip! I hate having to waste time checking for real comments. 🙁
I get some really crazy spam about sneakers and sunglasses. Ooh it drives me nuts.
Yep, there was a lot about fake Oakley in this batch. I don’t mind as much the ones that pretend to leave a comment with a link snuck in there. The ones with 15-20 links and no other text really grind my gears though.
I don’t get spam anymore. Even though my volume has more than doubled from the previous period. I use Disqus. Prior to that, though, I used Akismet, and it was amazing at catching spam comments. Neither require a captcha.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll take a look at Disqus. Don’t you have to pay a subscription for Aksimet?