6 Useful Wordpress Plugins to Prevent Spam
Author: Stacey Zimmerman

In starting your wordpress, there's a great possibility to
receive spams. Receiving comment spam when first starting a
blog can gain such traffic that could be alarming for
beginners. For this reasons we don't have the access to
prevent spammers to read our blogs. In just a minute your
blog can be spammed by thousands of comments. This article
introduces 6 proven useful plugins that is available in
wordpress to help you fight and eradicate spam.

yaCAPTCHA

It is a CAPTCHA plugin designed for WordPress, it helps you
block comment spam from automated bots. So if you post
comments, users have to write down the characters of an
image provided. It is planned for automated programs to
find it hard figuring out those characters, a great help in
preventing comment spam.

These are the requirements to have yaCAPTCHA in your
computers: WordPress 1.5 or above, PHP 4.0.6 or above with
GD2 library support, Theme must support the 'comment_form'
action.

Trackback Spam Resources

A very simple b ut effective test on all trackbacks in
order to stop spam. The TrackBack Validator, a plugin for
WordPress that are sent by people commenting on your weblog
that go along by a URL that points to that commentary. Spam
TrackBacks are accompanied by a URL that points to a
pay-per-click affiliate website or other irrelevant
material. The Validator exploits this key difference:

1. When a TrackBack is received, the plugin retrieves the
Web page located at the URL included in the TrackBack.

2. If the page contains a link to your weblog, the
TrackBack is approved.

3. If the page does not link to your weblog, the TrackBack
is flagged as spam and rejected.

Because TrackBack spammers do not set up custom Web pages
linking to the weblogs they attack, this simple test will
quickly reveal illegitimate Trackbacks.

WP-SpamFree and Trackback Validator

A very powerful anti plugin for WordPress that eradicates
comment spam, have a good performance in eliminating
trackback and pingback spam. It works invisibly without
CAPTCHA's, or other inconvenience to site visitors. The
plugin includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

Features

1. It's completely free for both commercial and personal
use.

2. The beauty of this plugin is the methods of blocking
spam. It takes a different approach than most and stops
spam at the door.

3. Powerful trackback and pingback spam protection.

4. It works like a firewall to ensure that your commenters
are in fact, human. Virtually eliminates comment spam from
bots.

5. It has a counter on your dashboard to keep track of all
the spam it's blocking. The numbers will show how effective
this plugin is.

6. Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use ?
no configuration necessary.

7. No false positives, which leads to fewer frustrated
readers, and less work for you.

8. You won't have to waste valuable time sifting through a
spam queue anymore, because there won't be much there, if
anything.

9. Easy to install ? truly plug and play. Just upload and
activate.

10. The code has an extremely low bandwidth overhead and
won't slow down your blog (very light database access),
unlike some other anti-spam plugins.

11. Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including
WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can
say that.

12. Display your blocked spam stats on your blog.

13. Helps keep your database slimmer and more efficient.

14. Works in WordPress MU as well.

Invisible Defender

wpsecurity1This plugin specializes in protecting
registration, login and comment forms from spambots by
addin g two extra fields hidden by CSS. This approach gave
me 100% anti-spam protection on one of my sites.

The idea behind this plugin is simple: SPAMBOTs either fill
every form field they find (generic spambots) or fill
WordPress-specific fields only (spambots which will
recognise WP or are targeting WP only). Therefore it is
sufficient to add two extra text fields to form (one empty
and one with predefined value), and check their values
after the form is submitted. 1st field (empty one) will be
filled by generic spambots, and 2nd one will not be filled
by spambots targeting WP only. With these two simple checks
probably all spambots can be easily detected, so WP can
return error "403 Forbidden" for them.

These two extra fields are hidden with CSS rule, so they
will not be visible for most users. Only users with
text-based browsers (and very old ones which not support
CSS) will see them. Invisible Defender also shows number of
blocked spammers in Dashboard, so you can see that it
really works.

Akismet

Akismet is quite possibly the most important and useful
plugin you will ever install. It has been developed by the
actual team behind Wordpress, if that is not enough of a
seal of of approval and a guarantee, I don't know what is.
In a nutshell, Akismet checks your comments against the
Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not
and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's
"Comments" admin screen.

Requires WP2.0 or higher and is compatible up to WP 2.8.4.

Maximum Security for Wordpress

Maximum Security for Wordpress is packed with strong
protection that makes your site extremely secure. It guards
against intrusion; tracks a plethora of events; blocks
malicious content that could harm your readers and your
search engine ranking; and includes a strong Web
application firewall along with a full blown intrusion
prevention system, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
No other security plugin for Wordpress comes anywhere close
to matching the powerful features of this tool.


About the Author:

Stace Zimmerman is an Internet Marketer who owns &
maintains many websites online. Please visit
http://themelib.com for wordpress themes and other blogging
information. He also runs a hoodia information site at
http://hoodiaandweightloss.com