Tag Archives: WordPress

Current Spam Protection for WordPress/WordPress MU

Currently there are (in my mind at least) four good spam protection plugins for wordpress and wordpress mu. Each one has their merits and I have used/am using all of them across sites.

First is Akismet. Akismet is created by Automattic, the team behind the creation of wordpress.org, wordpress.com, buddypress.org, and bbpress.org. All projects listed above are opensource except for wordpress.com and akismet. Akismet is probably the number 1 spam blocking tool for wordpress blogs and is truly amazing. It has just 1 problem, it requires an API key to use. So no problem, just go to www.wordpress.com and get one, right? Well yes, if you are running a small enough number single user blogs. The problem happens when you try to create a blog network or use a WPMU installation. You could hardcode your API Key into your plugin file but then you will get banned, very soon. Instead you need to purchase on of the Akismet Business or Organization Keys. Those are expensive and as I am using multiple sites with different wordpress and wordpress mu, I chose to use Akismet only on www.biologypowerpoints.com because it is a single site with only 1 blog installed.

Next is reCAPTCHA! In my informal testing on http://wpmu.zyrot.com it appeared that reCAPTCHA caught 99.9% of the spam. It works well as a spam prevention tool however the fact that it uses captchas is a really good reason to choose another spam protection tool. It also requires an API Key to function with however the API Key is available for free from http://recaptcha.net/. If you prefer a captcha based approach, reCAPTCHA is the tool for you.

After reCAPTCHA comes one of my favorite tools for Spam Protection, Bad Behavior. Bad Behavior seems to be doing a reasonably good job blocking spam on this wordpress mu site. It also requires an API Key which is free to get from it’s own website. It has worked well at blocking spam for me however it seems to be blocking quite a few legitimate users as well. It appears for my needs to be working but I may need to reconsider at some time.

Finally, the last plugin that makes this list is WP-SpamFree. Out of all the plugins on this list, WP-SpamFree is the only one that doesn’t require an API Key to function. This means that you just install the plugin and it works. WP-SpamFree has the most user-changeable options and has an extensive help system built into the plugin. For standard WordPress (single blog) users it works perfectly outside the box. However for WordPress MU users, it unfortunately allows the administrator of any blogs the options of the plugin. Most site owners don’t want this and as such I have modified WP-SpamFree so that it only uses the options that the site admin sets as the global options and that the options configuration page is invisible to all users except for the site admin. I’m waiting on a response from WEBGEEK before I officially release as a modified plugin.

To anyone with a Standard WordPress blog, I would recommend WP-SpamFree as the Spam Deterrent off Choice and for those using WordPress MU, I would recommend WP-SpamFree MU (will be released soon)!

New bbPress Admin Updated!

New bbPress Admin was officially updated last week to version 2.0. This adds a lot of stability along with a few other functions. The changelog details more…

—————————- Changelog: —————————-

2.0

  • Second Version of bbPress Admin. It has been adapted to have a backend interface to set the forums directory.
  • Looks Neater and is much easier to use.
  • Works with WP/WPMU 2.8.2 and bbPress 1.0.1

1.0

  • First Version of bbPress Admin. It is very simple and rudimentary at this point.
  • Working with WP/WPMU 2.8.1 and bbPress 1.0.1

You can find the plugin at it’s homepage. Right now Version 2.0 is stable however there are a few small bugs that are being worked on! Version 2.1 is in BETA on SVN!

Additionally, the homepage of New bbPress Admin has been updated so that it shows the most recent information (almost identical to the information on the http://wordpress.org plugin page.

Email Recieved With No Reply-To Address

I got this email yesterday,

Hey mate we are interested to hire you to fix our login/cookie problems. Please let us know if you are interested – we have a site with multiple wp blogs and a bbpress also. We want login/cookies to recognize after sign in on all pages. Currently working fine for blogs but not for bbpress. Thanks and please find me on yahoo/msn chat with the above nickname. Best >>

From what I can tell it was sent from the contact form located on the site. The problem you see is that there is no reply-to address. If the person you sent this email sees this, please try sending again or leave a comment with your email address. I would love to get back to you but I can’t without your email.

Thanks

WordPress Changes Guidelines for Plugin Authors!

Taken from here:

We feel that all software should have a changelog that details, at a high level, what changes have been made in each version so that the user can make an informed decision about when to upgrade and how much testing they should do with their site.

In order to make this an easy and open communication channel we have added support for a Changelog section in the plugins readme.txt file.  This changelog information is then displayed as a separate tab in the plugin directory and also in the back end of your WordPress blog when you view the details on a new version of a plugin.

I personally agree with this decision of the Automattic and the WordPress team because I have found some annoying plugins which don’t state why a plugin is updated. This should solve that problem rather nicely!

Spam Update!

From here:

Thanks for the pingback. It was appreciated and I have responded in turn! I agree that reCAPTCHA is a pretty cool web application and it certainly beats all of the current spam tools except for maybe Akismet. My only gripe with them as I mentioned is that I would need an enterprise key which I don’t really want to buy obviously. Therefore in terms of any plugins with captcha (really the only way to go) is with the reCAPTCHA plugin. Highly Recommended! 5 Stars!

Annoying Spam Problems Have Been Dealt With!

This is an exact copy of this blog post for my personal blog.

Well over the last 24 hours we had an increae in spam. I was seeing around 10 spam posts in a couple hours. I realized now that Akismet wasn’t gonna work because I would need to buy a corporate license. Looking through my options for spam protection on WordPress MU, I found this interesting looking captcha plugin that uses reCAPTCHA. Obviously, I was just a little bit intrigued because reCAPTCHA is a pretty amazing web application.

It worked better than I expected, since reCAPTCHA was installed and added it’s captcha’s to the sign up and comment form (registered and logged in users don’t see it), I have seen 0 spam! Obviously, this reCAPTCHA is some pretty good and interesting software. I may end up using it for some other projects I have been working on.

We’ll see how it goes!

Thanks,

The ZYROT Administrative Team!

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Just got Gravatar!

I just got a gravatar and have found that it works perfectly with my blog (this site) with no plugins or anything needed! I have to say, I’m very impressed with the gravatar system from Automattic (makers of wordpress) and just wanted to state that if you don’t have a gravatar go get one from www.gravatar.com.

Just a quick update 😀