Comment spam is a big problem for blogs. As your blog gains popularity, the spammers start to notice. At first, your blog gets a few comments per day advertising pornography, pharmaceuticals, and various other products. As time goes on, the trickle of spam turns into a landslide, and you can no longer keep up with the amount of incoming garbage. This is where Akismet comes in. Akismet runs all comments through a spam filter, effectively putting the brakes on the landslide.
Nothing is Perfect
Akismet is a great system, and actually learns spam patterns as time goes on. Unfortunately every once-in-a-while, Akismet comes up with a false positive and sticks a valid comment into the spam queue. Many bloggers manually check the Akismet spam queue for false positives and rescue what they can, however this process can be very time consuming for bloggers who deal with hundreds (or even thousands) of spam comments. This is where The Geek’s Spam Filter comes in.
The Geek is Here to Help
The Geek’s Spam Filter is a WordPress plug-in that works in conjunction with Akismet to ease the process of checking Akismet’s spam queue for false positives. Before each comment is sent to Akismet for analysis, The Geek’s Spam Filter will look for and delete any comments that contain keywords from a pre-defined list. It is pretty safe to assume comments containing words like “viagra”, “mesothelioma”, or sexual vulgarities are not valid submissions. The Geek’s Spam Filter will completely delete these comments, preventing them from ever ending up in the Akismet spam queue. When it comes to to check the queue for valid comments, there will be much less junk to wade through.
How to Install The Geek’s Spam Filter
- Download the plug-in.
- Upload the php file to your wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Head the WordPress plug-ins administration panel and activate the plug-in.
- Enjoy.
In addition to deleting comments that contain various nefarious keywords, The Geek’s Spam Filter will also nix any comments that contain more than 5 backlinks.
The Geek’s Spam Filter has already defined the list of bad words. If you would like to modify it, open the php file in a text editor like Notepad or Textpad and modify the line that contains the $badwords array.
