Why don’t you use Akismet?
My blog is attached to my publishing website, so its quite a bit more expensive than a personal blog. Plus I’ve read that its not that effective. Hence,I am looking for a Captcha that will work and not crash my blog – again. I’m using the latest wordpress 3.3
Ah, yeah, then it’s a bit more expensive.
Sorry, but I have no experience with Captcha plugins, so I can’t give you any hint.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cookies-for-comments/
See if that helps any. It blocks the majority of the automated spam bots. IT won’t stop the real human spammers, but the majority of spam (at least for me) was bots
For me, Akismet is very effective, stopping over 99.5% of spam comments with very few false positives. Why not install Akismet and see what happens? There’s little risk and it can even work in tandem with other plugins. Right now, I’m using an Akismet/Bad Behavior plugin combo and they prevent 99.8% of spam.
I would only use captchas as a last resort…correction, I’ll probably never use captchas. You will prevent some spam but in the process deter an overwhelming number of actual visitors from commenting.
I’m trying the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam. So far its working. NO SPAM this morning! I will give Akismet a go soon, but that will mean either a monthly fee or pay for a year up front. I’ve not found using a captcha has stopped me from commenting or using anything, then again, I’m me… 🙂
Yes, I think they were all bots, there were too many coming from the same addresses. Its hard to know which is bot and which is real, though the bots seemed to have an extra long address.
I’ll also give adding the coding a go as well – or if I cant, will get my friend to add it for me. If its simple, and I know where to put it, then it wont be a problem.
Many thanks for all the info, its much appreciated.
So how is Blogger different that it doesn’t seem to get any spam? I have The Woolly Mother (spinning, knitting, crafts, etc) on blogger and no spam.
I don’t know how Blogger differs architecturally…. I do know that WordPRess is incredibly popular. As such, spammers make the bots specifically to seek out WP installs. Much like viruses and Windows machines. Go for the most popular target
As for the captcha thing, just google captcha accessibility
It’s a genuine concern, especially if a website is for a business. I prefer to never have a captcha, and to try to find alternative measures.
I use gravity forms to allow folks to register (let’s me turn off normal registration, while still allowing registrations – defeats the majority of spam)
I use cookies for comments for the comments which is mostly successful. Akismet is hardly needed, to the point I wouldn’t pay for it were I considering it for a commercial site
I recently discovered a plugin En Spam – seems to work as advertised – prevents all bots with Cookies and Language Filtering.
Thanks guys. I’ll also give En Spam a go too. So far the Captcha is working, but its only a stop-gap measure.
It’s a genuine concern
Agreed. See http://blackwidows.co.uk/blog/?s=+captcha
especially if a website is for a business.
Actually no. Many national anti-discrimination laws apply to all web sites – not just business ones.
I think they were all bots, there were too many coming from the same addresses. Its hard to know which is bot and which is real.
Thanks for all the feedback. I did download a captcha and its working nicely at the moment.
