Spam is the scourge of the internet. Brought to us by spineless low class individuals who’s parasitic websites can’t get traffic on their own accord. Spammers will stop at nothing to leach traffic off of your hard work. When owning a blog that generally means that once you get a bit of traffic you run into Comment Spam. Thankfully for those of us using WordPess Blogs there are a number of WordPress plugins to help stop comment spam.

When you begin to notice that you are receiving comment spam you may be tempted to turn off the ability to comment completely. It is an option; however, it does limit your ability to interact with your audience. So, what are our options for stopping spam if we don’t turn off comments? In truth, you can’t totally stop it without shutting comments off completely. However there are several ways to limit the amount of spam that you receive.

Five Suggestions for Stopping Comment Spam

1. Implement a Turing test: The most well known Turing test is an image response scenario which creates a situation where the person posting the comment must enter a code which they receive on screen via randomly generated images (Figure 4.A). Most blogs have this functionality, or a plugin that will enable this functionality. The con with this type of test is that, depending on how you implement it, you may be creating an accessibility issue. People with limited vision often have a hard time reading images on screen which may or may not be an issue for you.
   

   On my blog I’m using Version 0.2.4 of Peter’s Random Anti-Spam Image for WordPress. It has some nice features that avoid creating accessibility issues. (Thanks Peter!)

2. Turn comments *off* for old posts: When posting, many blogs allow you to simply turn off comments for a specific post. Think of it like auto-archiving the comments feature. Essentially when a post becomes out dated (you determine when) the ability to comment is turned off. Open source blogs such as WordPress and Movable Type have plugins that allow for “auto shut-off” of comments based on their date of creation and most blogs also have manual setting that you can turn on and off to manage this feature on older posts. The con with this is that you loose some ability to receive comments on older posts.
   

   The plugin that I currently use for auto-archiving of comments is called Comment Timeout. by James McKay (Thanks for developing this James!). It is a great little plugin and has some outstanding features like:

   Per-post settings: You can set a longer (or shorter) duration for the discussion on particular posts, or even designate some posts to have comments kept open indefinitely.

   Extended discussions for popular posts: You can set a cutoff number of comments above which a post is automatically considered “popular” and entitled to have comments left open for a longer period of time.

   Send to moderation queue: You have the choice between closing comments altogether on older posts or sending them to the moderation queue.

   Advance warning: The comment form now informs your users when the discussion will be closed.

3. Filter comment content: Although this does not catch everything, filtering comments and auto-blacklisting comments based on things like the number of links in the comment or the types of words used does help to limit the amount of spam received. The con is that filtering comment limits the ability to be free with language. However, I’ve found that most of the language I’ve put on my blacklist I don’t want on my site anyway.
4. Force IP address and email validation in order to post comments: Spammers hate being identified, and forced validation helps to keep them off of your blog. The downside is that forcing people to validate an email address is sometimes viewed as a haste. On my site I’ve chosen only a valid IP address and that they submit an email, not necessarily validate it.
5. Force comment moderation based on user level: This is sometimes more work than it is worth, but it is effective. It involves forcing users to register to place comments and then allowing them to comment based on whether or not a moderator has approved them in the past. First time users go instantly to moderation while those who have already been approved are allowed to post instantly without moderation.

As you can see there are several options for limiting the amount of spam you receive. The best option for most users is to use a combination of methods to limit exposure. For example on my own blog I use IP address validation, a Turing test, a black list, forced email submission, and auto shut-off of comment capabilities on out-dated posts. It has significantly reduced the amount of spam I am exposed to, but I still do get some.

Feel free to post other solutions that you’ve found below.

WordPress is relatively easy to set up for basic moBlogging and provides several plugins that allow your blog to accept communications from your cell phone or PDA. The easiest, and by far the most common method is to use the free, open source plugin called “Postie” which was originally developed by John Blade. If you are using WordPress I’m sure you’ve heard of plugins. If not however, please refer to WordPress.org for more information. To set up your blog you’ll need to download and install the Postie plugin on your word press blog. Instructions and download information are available from the plugin page (www.economysizegeek.com/?page_id=395).
Once you have the plugin installed it will need to be configured. Before we begin you will need to know the device “send from address” that your cell phone/PDA uses to transmit text messages. This is similar to your cell phone number but comes in the form of an email address. The easiest way to find this is to send a text message to your personal email address from your phone and see who it comes from.

Once you have that information the process of configuring Postie is simple.

Configuring Postie:

Login to you WordPress blog as the “admin” and navigate to the Plugins tab in the WordPress administration interface.

Scroll down the page and click on “Activate” when you reach the Postie plugin.

With Postie activated you then need to go to the “Options” tab and click on the sub-tab “Configure Postie” to configure it.

Next you will need to add your device “send from” email address to the list of authorized users.

Finally, you will need to add your mail server settings. This will also require you to set up another email address on your web server that WordPress can use to get email from.

Refer to your hosting provider FAQ for information on how to do this.
With Postie configured you can now send an email to your WordPress blog. After you have sent an email, clicking on the “Run Postie” to post to your site.

Now, I know what you are saying. You don’t want to have to go and click a button each time to post the image that you sent from your cell phone to your blog. Neither do I, and in order to get around this all we need to do is set up an automated call to execute the get mail function. This “automated call” is called a “cron job”. In essence, you can think of a cron job as a command that you set up on your server to execute actions at specific re-occurring times in the future.

You’ll need to refer to your hosting provider’s FAQ information for details on how to set it up on your own server. For demonstration purposes I’ll set up a cron job using a program called cPannel which is the most popular interface used by hosting providers. Our cron job will execute the PHP script “get_mail.php” which resides within the Postie plugin. We’ll have the cron job make a call to the script every 5 minutes. That will ensure that when we send an email via our cell phone or PDA it will be posted to our site within 5 minutes.
Setting up a Cron Job in cPannel

To set up a cron job using cPannel you will first need to login to your cPannel via your hosting provider. Once there, click on the folder icon titled “Cron Jobs”.

You are now asked to select an experience level. For our purposes click the button labeled “Standard”.

You’ll notice that you can send the cron output to an email address. This is useful for testing purposes, however you will want to remove the email address when you are finished testing (unless you want to receive an email every 5 minutes telling you that the cron was executed).

In the “Command to Run” field enter the destination of your get_mail.php file. It should be something like:
http://www.YourWebSite.com/wp-content/plugins/postie/get_mail.php

Finally, select the options that run this cron job every 5 minutes and save your cron job.

Once your cron job is set up your posts from your cell phone/PDA will show up every 5 minutes from the time they are received.

Tip: Set Up an Auto Reply for Posts
If you are sending your posts to an email address it is nice to also set up an auto-responder that tells you when to expect the post to happen. This way you know that your message to your blog was received, and you know when it should post.