Antigua Web Solutions Blog

Two related plugins this week to protect your blog from spam! I was having a big problem with Akismet labelling almost half of my legitimate comments as spam. I’ve found these two plugins take care of this problem nicely

1) Math Comment Plugin

Uses a simple maths problem (e.g. what is 2+7) to prevent spam. It does need code to be added manually to the comments.php file for your theme and I also needed to make a few changes to the CSS file to get the math comment input box lined up nicely. To make changes to the CSS file add a new entry #mcspvalue. I wanted the input box smaller so I added #mcspvalue{width:25px;} Full instructions for adding the code can be found on the Math Comment Home Page.

2) Trackback Validation Plugin

Check trackbacks to ensure they are valid. Trackbacks flagged as invalid can be sent to moderation or deleted automatically.

From the Trackback validation Home Page:

When a trackback is received, this plugin

1. checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to.
   This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.
2. retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks .