Tag: Plugin

The Challenge that Failed Me

November 11, 2006 / / 0 Comments

The Math Challenge Plugin I used to employ to combat comment spams generated by spam robots failed me. And that is the reason why I’m dumping it.

I’m not exactly sure whether the comment spams that entered my akismet filter were posted by individuals, because there were so many of them, or the plugin must have just been defective. Nevertheless, I’m removing it and instead, have spam karma 2 purge those spam after 2 hours. Yeah you read it right, 2 hours. I may not even have the time to review those comments whether there are valid ones erroneously filtered by the two comment spam plugins.

Now, then, I would like to request my commentators who may find their comments not able to come through in the article they are commenting on to notify me via the contact page. This is very important and I want you to know that I value your comments very much that I don’t want them lost.

Moreover, I can now re-activate other javascript plugins like post-ratings, etc., that I once deactivated to give way to this inutile plugin.

New Theme

October 26, 2006 / / 4 Comments

With the employment of this new theme (Tech-o-Crunch), I’m really worried whether my challenge plugin will work fine.

I’m encouraging everyone to do drop me a line in the comments (after answering the math quiz, of course) so I can better test the functionality of the challenge plugin, and whether it is effective in capturing preventing spam comments.

Please, I need your help. My blog is flooded with spams!

A Math Challenge Plugin

October 22, 2006 / / 7 Comments

Spam comments has always been a problem in the blogosphere. Akismet and Spam Karma 2 are two of the most common spam protection plugins for wordpress blogs. What these plugins do, however, is simply catch spam comments and put them in queue for the administrator’s moderation.

Spam in blogs (also called simply blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments, promoting commercial services, to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly-accessible online discussion boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.

Adding links that point to the spammer’s web site artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.

Source: wikipedia

Spam comments are usually done through a program and/or machines. They are normally automatic once they’ve bookmarked your site. Now, although Akismet and Spam Karma 2 catch those spams and prevent them from being posted directly to your comments, they do not prevent them from reaching your comments (worse, they don’t cook them for breakfast! hehe). They help keep spam from being published, but not from reaching your comments.

As a result, you’ll need to check your admin panel regularly and browse through the captured spam comments for any erroneous catch. This is surely irritating, especially if you’re encountering an average of 10 to 20 spams per day (much worse is the case for other more popular sites).

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