It has features such as limiting the login attempts when logging in by IP address or subnet, custom login URLs, Cerber anti-spam engine, etc.
All the features that this plugin provides is worth checking out. With a 5-star rating and over 100K downloads, it’s a popular choice.
As the name suggests, the Stop WP Comment Spam plugin helps fight spam by automatically detecting comment spam. It does all of this without using annoying questions, quizzes, or CAPTCHA.
All that you need to do to get it working is to install it. This plugin features a free trial, and then there is an option to upgrade to the Pro version, which has features such as protecting your contact forms, the ability to stop fake user registration, run reports, and more.
3 Quick Tricks to Stopping Spam in the WordPress Dashboard
As you can see, to stop spam in your comment section, you have a wide range of plugins at your disposal.
There’s also a way to combat spam directly from the WordPress dashboard.
So, here’s a look at three ways to combat manual spam when a plugin might not be enough or when you want some added protection.
1. Make Users Register
One thing that may help is to make users register. Many drive-by spammers will not want to go to the trouble of registering to leave a quick spam comment. After all, they’re pretty lazy.
Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to make users register.
Some bots can attempt to register at your site, and while some may be successful, others will not. So even if some use automated software for registrations, it still puts up a wall that will work at least some of the time.
And if you notice a specific IP address causing trouble, you can block it with, for example, our Defender plugin.
The other thing to consider, of course, is your non-spamming visitors. If forced to register, users may go away. You’ll need to make a judgment call if registration is right for you.
2. Close Comments on Older Posts
Another way to combat spam is to shut the comment section down after a certain amount of time. Shutting down the comments can make sense if you have a highly publicized blog when published, and traffic dies down after a certain amount of time.
Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to close older articles’ comments.
From here, you can choose how many days old a post needs to be before shutting down comments.Not all, but lots of spammers like to leave links on pages at least somewhat related to whatever it is they’re trying to promote. You may have posts that fit that bill, but when you close comments down after a certain amount of days, then the possibility of having comments open on such a post shrinks dramatically.
If you close comments after 14 days and a spammer finds a post from two months ago via search, the comments on that post will be closed by the time they arrive.
Just keep in mind that doing this may hurt non-spamming visitors. Some may want to leave comments on older posts.
That said, most older posts tend not to get many comments. Folks see that the post has some age, and the flow of initial comments has either slowed considerably or stopped altogether.
If you like this method but worry about closing down comments to genuine visitors, you could extend the time allowed for comments.
3. Hold Comments with Links
This setting lets you hold comments with a certain amount of links in the body of the comment.
Go to Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation and set the number of links you’d like to allow.
Want to hold a comment if it has two or more links? No problem!You can decide how many links should trigger a hold here. Two is the default, but you could change that to one (or anything else).
Keep in mind, changing it to zero will hold all comments. That could get very time consuming to shuffle through them all in that setting.
Like That, Your Spam is Stopped
With all 15 anti-spam plugins mentioned in this post and ways to tweak your WordPress dashboard manually, you should easily combat spam on your site. Your WordPress site will be spam-free before you know it!
Spammers will be moving on to more vulnerable locations, leaving you more time to focus on actual users on your site and less annoyed.
If you’d like some more spam-tastic information, check out our Ultimate Guide to WordPress Spam.
On that note, go out there and put the smackdown on spammers.
Keep reading the article at WPMU DEV Blog. The article was originally written by Nathanael Fakes on 2020-09-03 20:32:40.
The article was hand-picked and curated for you by the Editorial Team of WP Archives.