WordPress Comment Spam Stopper plugin
Everyone hates spam, comment spam especially within wordpress. Sure there are plugins out there to reduce what shows up on your blog, a key player being Askimet, but I felt sorry for poor askimet, having to deal with literally thousands of spam messages.
Spamming is a common problem, I was getting (at least) 1000 spam messages a week, and I was sick of it. I’m sure also having so many spam messages stored in the database (even if identified by askimet) must have a speed impact on your blog.
Therefore I have created a simple solution to stopping spam at the source: asking a simple question that bots are too stupid to know in the comment form. I know only get about 10 spams per week, rather than 1000!
WordPress Comment Spam Stopper plugin
The whole idea to this plugin is to keep spammer robots from posting on your blog, reducing the space taken by spam messages in the database, and reducing the stress of being a spam magnet.
This plugin adds a field to the comment form which much be answered in order to post.
You can ask anything, keep it simple and obvious, e.g. Is the sky Green? NO!. Doing this will stop stupid bots from being able to post.
It only shows up when you are logged out, so you dont have to fill it in if your an admin. On top of this, it also adds javascript validation to the form to ensure the required fields are filled in.
To see it in action…make a comment! I’m using the plugin in this blog, obviously.
I’d like to thank Mike Cherim at http://green-beast.com/ who originally added this spam question to the WordPress PHP contact form plugin.
Get it now!
You can get the latest version from the wordpress plugin database; Download it here!
Installation
- Unzip and upload the php file to your wordpress plugin directory
- Activate the plugin
Configuration
Open the plugin file in a text editor and follow the instructions there in order to change the anti-spam question and disable auto-inserting the anti-spam field (useful if using a custom comments template).
If you are using a template which does not call wp_head() in the header file, you will need to open the plugin in a text editor, find the css styles/JS include and paste these into your header file manually.
Licence
WordPress Comment Spam Stopper plugin v2 © Copyright 2007-current. All rights reserved.
Mike Jolley
You are free to use this application but may not redistribute it without written permission.
Use of this application will be at your own risk. No guarantees or warranties are made directly or implied.
The creators cannot and will not be liable or held accountable for damages, direct or consequential.
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Ronalfy says:
Mike,
I think this is a great plugin idea. Do you by any chance know if this plugin causes the same accessibility problems that regular captchas do?
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 12:31 am
Mike Jolley says:
Well most image capatchas have the problem that the letters etc are hard to make out for some users. this one doesent have that problem, as it relies on human brain power, not typing back random letters.
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 1:25 am
Ajay says:
Hi,
I’ve featured you on today’s release at Weblogtools Collection
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 6:18 am
Mike says:
Thanks Ajay.
Version 1.1.1 has been posted with minor CSS fixes, thanks to Ronald Huereca for picking those up.
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 9:29 am
Edmundo Filho says:
shit
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Mike Jolley says:
“shit” – Im yet to design the wp-prick-stopper plugin :p
Comment made on February 21, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Cindy says:
cool! spam karma has been causing me a few problems, so will try this one out- many thanks!
Comment made on February 22, 2007 at 5:34 pm
jesse says:
sweet! like how you put the extra field before comment when jumping with .
good job
Comment made on February 22, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Adam LaMosca says:
Sound like a great service, thanks!
Comment made on February 26, 2007 at 7:13 am
Samwise at FOTC says:
Great site. I just ranted on my blog about the spammers being out in full force. And I quote, “Maybe if they took the time to visit personally, they would decide that it wasn’t worth their effort to post in the first place since their completely unrelated drivel and shameless attempts to eek a link would die a quick and painless death in the world wide recycle bin.” (http://fellowshipofthechainring.org/?p=105)
Comment made on February 27, 2007 at 4:23 am
Michael McClure says:
Nice Plugin. If it works as well (and easy) as it is described here, it will save me a ton of time deleting the spam that gets caught by Askimet. Maybe then I’ll have more time to actually write a decent article
Comment made on March 4, 2007 at 12:24 am
TiDY says:
maybe i am dumb, been known to happen, but i can’t seem to get this working … any help ???
Comment made on March 7, 2007 at 2:01 am
TiDY says:
doh … figured it out … it doesnt show when i try to comment myself – logged out and it works … haha … brain fart … looking forward to not seeing as much spam …
thanks !!!
Comment made on March 7, 2007 at 2:12 am
Elias says:
Hi, nice idea for a plugin. So, what do the plugin when a ping or trackback goes to my blog? Become this blocked or allowed?
Comment made on March 16, 2007 at 7:12 pm
ed says:
Nice plug-in, actually works for my wordpress 2.1.2 site. Just a couple things: highlighting the anti-spam question or answer box might help those who tend to overlook those boxes; also, (at least in Firefox), if you get the question wrong for whatever reason (such as you ignored the box), when you return to the form, all your painstakingly-typed, pithy, genius comments are wiped out as if they never were. Which is rage-inducing to those it happens to.
Scott Jangro at http://www.jangro.com/a/2007/02/01/buh-bye-askimet/ (who I don’t know from Adam) has a pretty nice fix for these 2 very problems with the Did You Pass Math? plugin.
Comment made on March 23, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Josette says:
Hi! I’m glad I saw this plugin and I’ll be trying it out. I’ve been getting lots of spam comments and I totally hate it! Haha! I hope this will work. Thanks!
Comment made on March 31, 2007 at 3:27 am
jolie says:
cool!
am really sick of ‘em!
Comment made on April 13, 2007 at 1:55 am
richvalla.com says:
Thanks for the plugin..
Comment made on April 19, 2007 at 2:40 am
Mike Jolley says:
ed – This is his big fix? “NOTE:Your browser may not have saved what you wrote.
“. Thats not a fix, thats a warning…
Thanks everyone for your support.
Yesterday I noticed zeldman.com was using it, cheers Mike C for plugging me :p
Comment made on April 19, 2007 at 8:00 am
Shaun says:
Thanks for this plugin, got it working on a site i am setting up. Is there an easy way to add form fields though as i could do with a few more fields?
thanks for the effort in producing this plugin
Comment made on April 27, 2007 at 11:18 am
Mike Jolley says:
More fields for what? eh?
Comment made on April 27, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Eric Meyer says:
Cool! Reminds me of http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/wordpress/wp-gatekeeper.html — although no doubt yours is probably a good deal more WP2-savvy than Gatekeeper.
Comment made on May 2, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Mike Jolley says:
Hope so, but no doubt yours is better coded. Thanks for stopping by!
Comment made on May 3, 2007 at 9:55 am
Nice from Thailand says:
Testing
What’s the difference to this plugin?
http://www.rebitran.com/captchathis-plugin-for-wordpress/
When the input is wrong, that plugin marks your comment as spam.
How about Spam Stopper plugin? just ignore comments?
Comment made on May 6, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Mike Jolley says:
Try it, it just tells you you made a mistake and blocks it completely
Comment made on May 7, 2007 at 8:28 pm