Dealing with spams is something that is common for internet users on a regular basis. Whether you are getting a spam message on your email address, mobile phone, or WordPress website, you know how irritating it can be. Moreover, after developers started developing software in order to execute various techniques to stop spams in WordPress, spammers are finding out new methods to get to you.
The battle between the spammers and users of internet services is never going to end, but you should not be the one to surrender. When there is any discussion about WordPress, there are a number of tricks which you can use for reducing its number, if not stopping it all together from the comments section in WordPress.
If you are new to blogging, we will discuss some tricks in this blog that you can implement without any need of installing additional plugins to handle spams in WordPress.
Activate Akismet
Akismet is one of the most popular and important plugins for WordPress. There is no requirement to download it as it comes pre-installed with the WordPress installation setup. However, it is important to activate it and it will generate the API key. Without the API key, you cannot tackle various types of spams. Moreover, it does a great job of catching various spam comments. Although all the good comments get filtered as Spam you can always recover it by looking at your spam comments regularly.
Comment Links by Using NoFollow
There are times when plugins are added by those who are new to blogging for removing nofollow attribute from comment author links. Bloggers sometimes think by applying dofollow on those links they will be able to encourage number of users to leave the comments section. Therefore, it results in a huge number of spam comments. Also, non-spam comments are submitted by the users usually who are not interested in discussion but the link back. Always remember that, it all about quality, not quantity. Furthermore, it always a bad idea to use plugins that share link juice using comments. If you are not using any such plugin, then it is good you can proceed further.
Reducing Spam Comments by Using Cookies
In order to use this method, you need to install and activate Cookies for Comments plugin. Most of the spambots are automated scripts, and for spamming more websites in less time they don’t download any stylesheets or any images. With this plugin, it sends users a stylesheet or image file whenever they need to access a page with the comment form. If the user’s web browser automatically downloads all those files then plugin sets a cookie identifying them as a valid user. For further more assistance check out how to reduce comment spam using cookies.
Using Honeypot to Block Spam Comment Bots
For dealing with spam comments Honeypot technology can be utilized for fooling the spambots. In order to perform the same, users must first install the WP-Spam Fighter plugin and later activate it. Once it is activated, just click on Settings and then click on WP Spam Fighter and after that honeymoon protection should be activated. Moreover, this will add a hidden form to your comments section which can only be seen by the bots. These spambots are later programmed for filling fields in a user form.
Captcha Verification Must be Added
By using the WP-reCAPTCHA plugin, WordPress users can enable the recaptcha challenge on their comment forms. Recaptcha shows an image which contains characters and users must type these characters in order to prove that they are actually human. Moreover, recaptcha is a convenient method to block all the spambots, this will not prevent your website from submitting the spam comments manually. Another problem with recaptcha is that it makes it difficult for users to submit their comments. On the other hand, reCAPTCHA is an effective and quick way for blocking all the available spambots.
Website URL Field Should be Removed from Comment Form
The URL field in the comments form not only attracts the spammers but also invite those people who are not at all interested in discussion. These comments contain a line or two of non-sense thing, the comment author name will have a keyword or combination of the keyword with a real name. Therefore, by removing the URL field from the comment form will stop this kind of behavior on your website. Further, review web hosts and choose only the best which can provide you security, scalability and stability.
Disabling Comments on Media Attachments
WordPress creates an image attachment pages automatically which allows users to see an image and even comment on that particular image. If you are going to link your images to the attachment pages, then after sometimes you will have a lot of attachment pages with so many comments enabled on it. If images is an important part of your content then it’s okay. However, if you don’t want users to comment on images instead of posts then turn off the comments on media attachments.
HTML in Comments Should be Disabled
Another good trick to disallow links in the comments is by disabling HTML in comments. It is one of the easiest ways to do and it can be done by installing and using Peter’s Literal Comments plugin. Just install and activate the plugin and any comment submitted to your website will get HTML parsed using WordPress filters. Moreover, it will change all the double quotes, less than and greater symbols in HTML entities.
Comments on Older Posts Should be Turned Off
WordPress allows its users to set a comment closure deadline. For this, you need to go to Settings and then click on Discussions and then under “Other Comment Settings” you will see the option “Automatically Close Comments on Articles Older Than”. After that, click on the checkbox which is next to this option and enter the required number of days you want the comment to be displayed for that particular post.
Now, WordPress will automatically close comments on the posts which is older than the number of days defined by you for this option.
Conclusion
Tackling with spam is an ongoing battle for many users. You always need to keep an eye on spam comments and WordPress website owners cannot risk posting spam on their website if they working so hard on it. By using all the tips and tricks we have discussed in this article, you will definitely reduce all the spam comments in WordPress. In addition to these tips, you need to review web hosts so as to maintain the performance of your WordPress site.