redsand

Hi alistairg,

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to post your review! I know that our plugin users are busy people, and your time is valuable, so it really means a lot to us when users post reviews and thoughtful feedback like this. 🙂

I’ll be happy to clarify on functionality and perhaps answer your concern.

The plugin does not claim to filter swear words and such, for a couple reasons: to protect freedom of speech so that people can choose whatever language they like. Swearing is not offensive to everyone, and so we want people to be able to speak as they like. For example, for those who serve in the military (which I did) and other professions, swearing is merely a part of everyday language. Also, usage varies in different countries, and in English and other languages, swear words vary by location and dialect. I do understand how it may offend others though.

However, if a site owner wishes to block swear words (or anything else), you can do this by enabling Enhanced Blacklist in the WP-SpamShield settings, and enter any swear words (or other words) that you want to block into the blacklist box.

Administrators such as yourself will be whitelisted, so that would explain why things weren’t triggered when you tested it yourself. (This would remain true even after adding items to the blacklist.) You will need to have someone else test from another location, who does not have a user account on the site. You are not a spammer, and the plugin knows this. 🙂

We built over 100+ filters into the plugin to ensure it’s accuracy. I think you will find it quite accurate.

We will add more information about this into the documentation to help people get the most out of the plugin.

If we can help in any other way, please let us know. Feel free to submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support page. We also have a number of helpful FAQs and Troubleshooting Guide.

I hope you have an outstanding week!

– Scott

Hi flyfisher842,

I’ll be happy to help.

This particular question has been answered a number of times already both here in the forums, and in the plugin documentation, so forgive me if I re-use the bulk of one of my earlier replies. 🙂

WP-SpamShield protects a lot more than comments & contact form pages (please see documentation for full list of features). Also, remember that jscripts.php is not just simple JavaScript…There are two layers of protection, so in addition to the JavaScript, it has an algorithmic layer. Things won’t function correctly if you stop it from loading as it’s designed to.

However, you don’t need to worry about site speed with WP-SpamShield. The plugin is extremely well-optimized already, and no further optimizations need to be made to it. I do realize that not all plugin authors keep site speed optimization in mind…but we definitely do.

Keep in mind that just because a script comes up on a list of scripts from an automated analysis tool labeled as “render-blocking”, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is actually slowing down your site. There is absolutely no hit to your site’s load time from jscripts.php.

Installing WP-SpamShield actually helps speed up a site on the whole.

We cover all the specifics in depth in two FAQs – please give these a read:

• Q: I’m trying to optimize my site for speed, and Google PageSpeed and/or Yahoo YSlow are telling me I should move the
  wp-spamshield/js/jscripts.php file to the footer. Should I be concerned about this script slowing down my page?
• Q: Will WP-SpamShield slow down my site, and is there anything I can do to optimize my site for it?

This will answer your questions in detail. 🙂

Let us know if we can help with anything else.

– Scott

Hi WebEndev,

At the top of the support forum there is a sticky post that we ask users to read first because it guides you to excellent troubleshooting options we have already put together for our plugin users.

We will be happy to help you out. You will need to take the following steps:

1. The Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs are the place to start.

   Please take a few minutes to work through these, as they solve over 90% of issues users have. (Please be sure to follow all the steps, not just read through them.)

   Once you have gone through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs, if that doesn’t solve the issue, we’ll need a bit more info from you on the specifics, and we’ll need to email back and forth, so you should move on to the next step.

2. Submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support Form, our main support channel for the plugin. We have an excellent diagnostic process.

That will allow us to help you diagnose this, find out what the real issue is, and get things working right for you.

– Scott

Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues.

Hi Nanowisdoms,

The new issue you are experiencing would be a completely separate issue, and would not be caused by WP-SpamShield. C’mon now…give us a little credit! 🙂

Like I said above, if you have any further questions, please contact us by email as part of your existing support request, and we’ll be happy to help.

– Scott

No worries. One thing to note on this point you mentioned:

Say for example like Amazon changes its API call, then knowing that amazon was a trusted source and not it’s not meeting the specs, you could alert the user this source has changed and is being rejected.

We can’t mark Amazon as a trusted source, as a lot of bad activity (both spam and malicious traffic) does come from Amazon servers, as they are also a web host, and have a huge amount of IP addresses. So we have to go according to their spec in order to whitelist anything from them.

Thanks for the update. Works fine.

You’re very welcome. 🙂

Obviously Spam-Shield is sensitive to such things and is blocking more than just spam form submissions.

This is all explained in the plugin documentation, and in the FAQs, and Troubleshooting Guide.

Blocking spam form submissions is one thing, blocking transaction requests, like Amazon SNS bounce notifications, is quite another and impact operations that can affect one’s reputation.

All WordPress . org plugin use is based on the principle that you take responsibility for your website. We are offering you a free gift, and how you choose to use it is up to you. If there is any risk to your reputation from an element of your website not functioning as you like, then you need to employ a full-time web developer to manage it. Please do not try to assign that burden to free plugin developers. We are merely creating something in hopes it may benefit the community. Keep in mind we are under no obligation to provide support, yet we do so anyway. All responsibility for a website belongs to the website owner, not anyone else.

As we state in our documentation, we are committed to zero false positives, and when one is reported, we fix it immediately.

How can we be better alerted that SpamShield is blocking non-form related visits — and what those are, so we can see if there any important ones being blocked?

Logging is included in the plugin. It is explained in the documentation that the plugin blocks many types of spam. FAQs cover what to do if something was blocked that you believe should not have been.

So Spamshield needs to first know/learn what is “normal” for the website before it starts filtering. And then, once it is filtering, it needs to create dashboard and email alerts when something “normal” is all of a sudden being blocked.

Instead of doing this, we have the plugin only filter bad requests. What you had was a one-time issue that we corrected as soon as it was reported. Using the method you suggest assumes we would accept a certain amount of error within the plugin. We do not. If a legit issue gets reported, we fix it.

How sensitive is the patch to changes Amazon may put in their URL requests?

It follows Amazon Specs as outlined on: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/json-formats.html

If you have any further questions, please submit them to us via email on your support request thread on the WP-SpamShield Support page and we’ll be happy to answer them.

Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues.