The 19 Wordpress Spam Plugin Guide

Spam is one of the greatest nuisances we deal with while running blogs. It festers and attacks us like a plague – and new methods of counteracting are developed every day.

We’ve got captchas, multiplication questions – the works. Use this guide as an informative list of a Wordpress spam plugin for your own blog.

1. DNS Anti-Spam -This plugin will protect your blog from comment spam, and checks comments against blacklists.

2. Tolero Spam Filter - By using your Apache log file, this plugin protects against spam by checking the user’s behavior.

3. Math Comment Spam Protection - By asking the submitter a simple math question, this plugin will weed out users who aren’t real humans.

4. Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam - Stops spambots by asking users to identify a random word image. No cookies or JavaScript is required – and allows for audio translation for the hearing impared.

5. Defensio Anti-Spam - This is an all-in-one spam plugin using the Defensio spam service. Must be used apart from services such as Akismet. An account and API key is needed before it may be used.

6. WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam - Eliminates automated blog comment spam from bots, including trackback and pingback spam.

7. WP-Spam Hitman - This spam filter uses a certain set of rules, and when enough match for a spam comment – it is blocked or sent to the spam folder.

8. NoSpamNX - NoSpamNX automatically adds additional formfields to your comment form, invisible to the users. If a spambot fills these fields blindly (which 99.9% of all spambots do), the comment will not be saved.

9. TanTanNoodle’s Simple Spam Filter - Legitimate comments that get blocked (either by this plugin or by Akismet) can be presented with a captcha to confirm that the comment is legitimate. Comments that don’t pass the captcha will be immediately discarded.

10. SpamShiv Spam Protection - This plugin uses JavaScript to protect your email addresses listed on pages within your Wordpress installation.

11. AVH First Defense Against Spam - Spammers are identified by checking if the visitors IP exists in a database served by stopforumspam.com, the Project Honey Pot or a local blacklist.

12. Block Spam By Math - Uses simple math questions to block spambots from your blog.

13. Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen. A very reliable service, and works well for many blogs – including my own.

14. Bad Behavior - Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.

15. Invisible Defender – This plugin protects registration, login and comment forms from spambots by adding two extra fields hidden by CSS.

16. SpamTask – Uses spam filtering and analyzing methods to deter spammers from posting spam comments.

17. Anti-Captcha - Anti-Captcha is a transparent captcha solution which does not require any end-user interaction. It is based on a nonce key, which is dynamically inserted using randomly generated (and obfuscated) javascript.

18. WP Clickcha - Clickcha is a unique CAPTCHA system that more secure than traditional text based CAPTCHAs yet easier to use. Clickcha will replace the Wordpress post comment button with an image based CAPTCHA that requires a single click to solve and post the comment.

19. JS AntiSpam - A simple antispam plugin without questions on Javascript-solution. The content in the textbox is also configurable with own words.

Share with us the spam plugins you use and have had success with for your Wordpress blog.