How to Avoid the Spam in Your Blog
Remember when Spam was just that gross stuff that came in a can? And your grand parents would serve it on trays next to crackers and cheese? Now Spam is even viler because, instead of iffy canned meat by-products, spam can choke the life out of your email box, your website—basically anywhere that you exist online is subject to spammers.
Blogs are especially subject to spam. Everyday it seems that there are more and more comment spammers, just waiting to take up room on your server. Luckily there are ways that you can avoid the spam.
The easiest way to manage your comment spam is to set up a Captcha. A captcha is a little device that you add to your blog to make sure that the person leaving you a comment really is a person. The captcha is that little form you fill out that tells you to type the letters that are in the picture. Some blogging utilities like Blogger have the captcha built in. There are also plug-ins that you can download to install the captcha on your website. You will be amazed at how quickly the spam stops after you install a captcha in your blog.
Of course, you could potentially be receiving email spam from your blog as well. Try to avoid putting your e-mail address up on your blog. Obviously, you will want people to contact you, but listing your email address is a fantastic way to tempt spammers. If you must put your email on your site, try spelling it out. Instead of noname@whatever.com, try listing your email as noname [at] whatever [period] com. You can also download a simple plug-in that will install a comment form on your blog. If you have a comment form, there is no need to list your email address at all! Just make sure that you add a captcha to the comment form, or you might still have to deal with lots of spam.
You can also take steps to re-code your site to discourage spammers. A simple internet search will turn up lots of coding tricks to stop the spammers from getting the best of your blog.
Filed under: Blogging strategies, Blogging tips
To combat website comment spam, I installed a captcha. Works well for me thus far. As for email spam to me from my site? My email service provider catches 99% of them, so no big concern there!
I’m using gmail and gmail are good on email spam, I love them.
I agree, gmail are fantasic with their spam filters. I had to switch from hotmail because of that reason. As for my website email, I rarely get any, the spam filters on it work great.
Yes gmail is really best for spam filtering.
captcha is really useful to my blog. that way we can separate human or evil robot! hehe..so far i got no trouble with spams. i recommend it to all readers.
I think gmail have have a nice spam protection.I use this and I am satisfied with the performance.
Gmail Rocks when it comes to spam protection, and I use blogger and google has done a great job keeping spam out.
It’s amazing how much spam Gmail catches.
Nice advice, I should definitely consider setting up a captcha… it may make things easier when filtering out spammers. I currently must approve comments before they get posted, but will keep this info. in mind. Thanks for bringing a “captcha” to my attention!
your htaccess file is also a great way to block spammers. Perishable (http://perishablepress.com/) details two main methods how it can be used. i highly suggest wordpress admins to read his latest post on how to prevent hacking attempts as well.
I’m debating whether to install captcha or not. My only worry is that it might be annoying for people to fill out every time. Maybe using cookies for removing captcha on certain ip addresses would be a good idea.
yeah, I totally agree, gmail is really good with spam filtering..but I am still using my hotmail, due some other reasons..:)
It’ll save you a ton of time for comment moderation so you can focus your energy on more productive things like writing posts.
I think it would definitely be too annoying for my visitors!
Maybe in the “contact” section it would be fine…