Comment spam is the harsh reality and every green behind the ears, enthusiastic, unprepared blogger will be staggered by the sheer volume they receive of it. WordPress can help, but you need to mentally prepare yourself for the hard fact that more than 99% of the comments you will receive is going to be spam. If you leave the issue unattended, the spam can quite literally overtake your site database and get you permanently banned from search engine index.
The first thing on your to-do list should be to prepare your website admin (backend) to help you deal with such massive amounts of bull. That’s where WordPress bloggers have an advantage. As much spam there is, there are quite a handful of powerful solutions, available free or for pocket-change-cost, to help stop and/or manage spam influx on your website.
Read: How To Prevent WordPress Spam Comments With Smartness And Plugins
Here are 7 top tools for stopping comment spam in WordPress. Take a look at:
1. Akismet
Availability: WordPress Plugin Directory and Akismet
Shipped free of cost with every WordPress install, Akismet is a staple because it’s WordPress through and through. This is the prima donna of all anti spam plugins available for WordPress.
Developed by Automattic, Akismet is pretty damn powerful. The enterprise grade spam prevention (and management) features are off the charts, some of which include a self-learning spam detection algorithm (notes your ‘comments marked as spam’ and uses it for automatic spam marking in future). The plugin also lets you put your comments on Akismet server (where they undergo spam checks by the aforementioned algorithm). Comments that pass the inspection are published on your site’s front end, while the rest are marked spam and eventually deleted. All the comments (spam or genuine) are maintained in logs that you can check at your leisure.
Akismet comes with up to 50k spam checks per month, only for non profits and personal blogs. Commercial websites can get the API key by subscribing at $5/month charge – a reasonable cost which is absolutely worth it.
How to Setup Akismet WordPress Plugin [Video]
How to Get Free Akismet API Key for WordPress Blog
2. WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam
Availability: WordPress Plugin Directory
WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam is featured right on top in ‘anti-spam plugin’ search results on WordPress.org Plugin Repository. It deserves the spot.
The plugin is absolutely free of cost and efficient to the last degree. It can tackle spam in comments, registration/ sign up forms, trackbacks and pingbacks, etc. It can track and identify incessant spammers (based on IP) and let you blacklist the troublemakers to protect your site’s database from spam. It even has a JavaScript (cookie authentication) layer to help prevent spam from bots.
The plugin has nothing to do with Captcha or those lame ‘prove you are a human’ questions/ tick boxes. It automatically blocks proxy server users and supports every major WordPress form plugin.
It’s a smart plugin that costs nothing.
3. Anti-Spam Bee
Availability: WordPress Plugin Directory
With over a million active installs and counting and a glowing letter of recommendation from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg himself, you can be sure you’re not wrong with Anti-spam Bee.
This plugin is free for all and super smart. It can take care of IP blacklisting (comment blocking), trackback validation, database optimization (a feature many people get by downloading a separate plugin like WP Sweep), and more. It shows you detailed monthly stats and spam activities in your admin dashboard and lets you ‘create’ your own spam detection algorithm by selecting certain indicators based on your knowledge of your user base.
Told you it’s an intelligent little beast. It’s also completely devoid of any annoying ads and complies with data privacy standards (Europe), which is another layer of icing on the freaking cake of awesomeness.
4. CleanTalk
Availability: WordPress Plugin Director7 Tools for Stopping Comment Spam in WordPress
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