The WP-Ban Wordpress Plugin
Here’s a quick tip for some of the more experience bloggers in the audience. Chances are you get up every morning, check your comments, and then dreadfully click on the Akismet Spam folder in an attempt to make sure no real comments ended up in your spam box.
What you’ll begin to notice, over time, is that most of your spam comments are coming from the same IP address. You’ll eventually wish these spammers couldn’t leave you a message at all, and that’s the problem the WP-Ban Wordpress Plugin solves.
Yes, WordPress does have features that allow you to block IP addresses, but that blocking only throws the message directly into your spam folder. The cool thing about the WP-Ban Wordpress Plugin is that the spammer never gets to leave a comment at all. Your blog recognizes the IP address before the visitor is able to write his remarks so it never shows up in your spam folder.
There is a trick to effectively using this plugin. You need to make sure you are only blocking IP addresses that show up in your Akismet spam folder multiple times. Randomly blocking ALL of the IP addresses that show up may inadvertently lead to a legitimate reader being spammed, especially if they use shared servers like those used on college campuses or in business settings. If you only see a spam comment from a certain IP address once or twice it’s probably safe to let your Akismet spam folder pick that one up. If you see spam messages from the same IP 1,749 times, you might want to give the IP address to your WP-Ban Wordpress Plugin.
If you’re serious about your freelance writing career you’ll want to do everything you can to spend more time writing and less time taking care of administrative tasks. It only takes a few minutes to install the WP-Ban Wordpress Plugin and it’s well worth the time it’ll save you in the future!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hmmm….I never thought to compare the IP addresses before. Brilliant idea!