How to prevent or combat spam messages in WordPress Comments

(Important Note: By doing this, I expected you have an internet connection and your own webhost or webserver on your localhost. I’m not held any responsible for misused of the said instructions.)

FAQ:
Why there is a spam in my WordPress comments? Some website owners believe that having many trackbacks or pingbacks can increase pageranks.

Spamming on WordPress Comments is face by many of the website or blog owners. To fight or combat this spam messages or links, there couple of ways to prevent spamming on your WordPress Comments.

1. Login to your WordPress account, go to Settings then Discussions.

1.1 Uncheck: Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can prevent from other websites/blogs to link into the comments.

1.2 You can used this option: Allow people to post comments on new articles. (From here, you can manage your new articles from comments, if you monitor that the traffic is good, then you can enable this so that people can post a comment.)

1.3 For more secure and to prevent spamming, you can enable this options:

Comment author must fill out name and e-mail.
Users must be registered and logged in to comment (optional).
Automatically close comments on articles older than (pick how many days)

1.4 For additional settings, you may also used this:

A comment is held for moderation.
An administrator must always approve the comment.
Comment author must have a previously approved comment.

1.5 Comment Moderation (You can hold a comment if it contains 1 or more links, because the common characteristics of a spam has a 1 or more links on its comment.)

You can also filter words like name, URL, e-mail, IP, or text. (One word per line)

1.6 Comment Backlist (like comment moderation, but instead, it will be marked as spam)

1.7 You can also specify to allow comments and allow pingbacks on each WordPress Article or Post. (Again, to prevent spamming, uncheck the Allow pings)


2. If you ever wonder about plugins that can help to prevent comment spamming. Try the following:

2.1 SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress forms for comments, registration, lost password, login, or all.

2.2 Captcha
The Captcha plugin allows you to protect your website from spam by means of math logic and you can use this captcha for login, registration, password recovery, comments forms.

2.3 Bad Behavior
Bad Behavior is a PHP-based solution for blocking link spam and the robots which deliver it. 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.

2.4 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.

3. NOFOLLOW LINKS
There are times you need to use nofollow on your post links or comment links.

How to check and use nofollow links click here
Modify Link Relationship (XFN) to “nofollow” in WordPress 3.x click here

That’s it. Hopefully this helps you out 🙂

BACK ON TOP

Related Links / Articles / Entries / References / Sources:
WordPress.org – Official Site
HOW TO CHECK IF THE LINK IS DOFOLLOW OR NOFOLLOW
Modify Link Relationship (XFN) to “nofollow” in WordPress 3.x