Unfortunately, comment spam is a fact on the internet. If you enable comments on your website, you will have to deal with spammers on your website. To prevent your site from making a poor first impression, you’ll need to find a way to stop comment spam.
You will never be able to eliminate comment spam entirely, you can do several things to slow it down and also try to stop it. For WordPress users there are several things you can do to block or hide them before your visitors see them.
In this blog post we will look at different ways you can stop spam comments.
As your site grows and the more popular, spam is likely to become a bigger issue. There are many types of comment spam, but most of it is automated and posted by spam bots that use short messages as a cover for including links.
How to stop comment spam on your WordPress website
The following are different solutions to stop comment spam on your WordPress website.
1.Reduce the number of links allowed per comment post
Most comment spam is designed to add links in the comment section on your website and trick people into clicking on the links. One way to stop spam is to have fewer links in your comments. Legitimate visitors will also be prevented from posting many links, but slowing down the spammers can be worth that potential inconvenience.
From the WordPress dashboard, you can navigate to Settings → Discussion. Scroll down to the section Comment Moderation, it’s 5 section down:
In this option you can decide how many links will be permitted in a comment before it is flagged for moderation. You also reduce the number to zero if you want to require moderation for any comment with links
2. Create a list of ‘blacklisted’ words
A lot of spam comments contain a lot of recognizable keywords. This makes it easier to spot them appearing on your website. In WordPress you can create a ‘blacklist’ of words, and your site will flag any comments containing these words. You can also add URL, Ip address into this box too.
To create this for your WordPress website ‘Settings → Discussion and then find the ‘Comment Blacklist’ section:
Here, you can enter your list of words. When any comment is posted that contains one of those words, it will be sent to the trash. When using this feature it’s important to choose the words in your blacklist carefully, so you don’t delete comments by legitimate posters.
3. Restrict comment privileges to registered users
The goal of most spammers is to post on as many pages and sites as possible. The challenging you make it for them to add their comments to your site they will move onto the next site.
You can achieve this by restricting comment privileges to people who have registered on your site only. This will put an extra hundle in the way of the spammers.
You can do this in settings → Discussion section in WordPress. You will find this option in “Other comment settings” this is the 2nd section down.
You’ll find it under Other comment settings:
Check the box users must be registered and logged in to comment.
4. Set up a comment moderation system
Comment moderation is when you require some or all of the comments to be approved before they are permitted onto your website. If you have the time and resources this is a good option to take.
In Wordpres you enable this go to Settings → Discussion, and navigate to the section “Before a comment appears” This is the 4th section down.
Cleaning up spam on your website can a challenging task we suggest putting together an anti spam strategy.
If you have any comments with how to implement any of these techniques. Contact us by emailing on info@thedigitalstudios.co.uk
