22nd August 2006

Spam Karma to the rescue (again)

posted in blogs |

I detest spam of all flavors, but especially the virtual kind. Thankfully the email programs I’ve been using, and the server-based spam filtering solutions utilized by those maintaining the email servers I’ve used of late, have proven very effective in almost entirely eliminating spam from my inbox. With the recent upgrade of my blog to the latest iteration of Wordpress, I had hoped the built-in spam filters would be good enough that I might not need a wordpress blog spam filter.
Unfortunately, this was not the case.

Enter Spam Karma, which again has ridden to my rescue. I was hoping Wordpress 2 wouldn’t need a spam filter plugin because I haven’t liked Spam Karma– in fact I love it– I hoped I wouldn’t need it because I hoped Wordpress users would have a standalone solution that they wouldn’t need to supplement with additional plugins. Off the server, Wordpress 2 does come with the Akismet plugin already installed
and ready to activate– but I haven’t used it and it looks to me like Spam Karma is a more elegant and less obtrusive solution.

If you’ve had experiences, good or bad, with Wordpress and effective blog spam fighting, I’d be interested to hear about them. (I have solicited this type of input before.) Doug Noon put me on to “Spam Karma” and “Bad Behavior” several months ago, and without them I literally might have had to turn off commenting on my blog. Just last night and this morning it appeared that over 200 obscene blog spams were posted
to my site, but activating Spam Karma appears to have done the trick and eliminated all this garbage.

Spam Karma is free, btw, and doesn’t require a registration of any kind to use. The “Bad Behavior” plugin I had previously used didn’t seem to work with Wordpress 2, so I don’t have it active. I am considering also installing some type of “captcha” plug-in, several are recommended on Wordpress’ anti-spam plugin page, but I’m not sure which one would be best to try. If possible I’d rather avoid making blog commenters do more than they have to to leave
feedback.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 10:38 am and is filed under blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 5 responses to “Spam Karma to the rescue (again)”

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  1. 1 On August 22nd, 2006, Doug Noon said:

    I don’t have Bad Behavior running on my blog, but I do have Akismet and Spam Karma. According to Podz’, my favorite source for Wordpress help, all 3 spam filters should work OK together.

  2. 2 On August 24th, 2006, KJanowski said:

    Love your blog and subscribe and read it faithfully! But can you tell me what this means:
    I wasn’t hoping Wordpress 2 wouldn’t need a spam filter plugin because I haven’t liked Spam Karma–
    you lost me on that one!!
    Keep up the great work.

  3. 3 On August 25th, 2006, Brett Moller said:

    Hi Wes,

    This is awesome stuff… Installed it 3 days ago and it has just caught 255 spam!! So far it is all I have needed - Fingures croosed.

  4. 4 On September 12th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

    That should have been “I was hoping”– I fixed this in the original post. Thanks Karen!

  5. 5 On December 10th, 2006, Pozycjonowanie said:

    Someone else below asked this already about antyspam sripts.
    I am getting nailed with Spam on my website mails and in our blog website - now ist offline too

    much spam. Is there anyway to stop this? If not, there really isn’t any point in leaving it up

    and active. Any help will be greatly appreciated. http://www.profesjonalna-reklama.pl

    Thanks for help, Keep up the good work. Greetings from Poland