Cleaning up
Published by Deanna Hoak December 5th, 2006 in blogThe comment spam on my site is getting bad enough that I’m going to stop going through what the spam blocker picks up–there’s just too much of it. The blocker is not perfect, though, and in the past has deleted genuine comments. If you don’t see a comment of yours appear in a reasonable time (if it’s a first comment, I approve it to make sure you’re not a spammer), please do let me know.
You can also use the option to register with my site. I don’t do anything with the information there and don’t even care if you use a real e-mail address, though I would like to have some idea who you are. :-)
I’m curious what you guys think of contact pages in general. I wonder if people are less likely to get in touch if they have to use one, and I don’t notice a decrease in e-mail spam since taking off my e-mail address. I wanted to use one of the programs that scrambles my e-mail address to bots but works for real people–such as OHLONE’s–but I never could get them to work. (I think because my sidebar wants everything to be a link and I couldn’t figure out how to turn that off.)
Opinions?
10 Responses to “Cleaning up”
Leave a Reply
Search
About
I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
RSS FeedCategories
- blog (462)
- conventions (14)
- copyediting (54)
- food (12)
- grammar (2)
- kids (21)
- praise (14)
- SFnal (10)
- writing (23)
I would recommend Spam Karma for your blog to knock down the spam comments. It is one of the better WP Add ons to get.
Thanks, RK. I’m currently using Akismet, and it does a great job; I just can’t wade through everything it catches to make sure that it’s doing a perfect job, and it tends to err on the side of caution. I’ll check out Spam Karma, though.
Once your address has been gotten by some spammer, they sell it around; removing it after the fact won’t really help. (Eudora’s doing an overall decent job of catching spam for me, in its most recent incarnation.)
…I cannot remember if I registered here already or not. Is there any way to check?
Hi, Beth. No, you haven’t registered here. I haven’t had any trouble with any of your posts going into spam yet, but I guess you never can tell. :)
As far as contact pages go, I prefer them to plain email addresses.
That’s a pain about the spam! I don’t understand why people do it. I now get spam advertising stuff that doesn’t even have a link. It’s like a swarm of pesky mosquitoes! What’s the point? Spam doesn’t actually work, does it? So why keep do spammers keep spamming?
Hey Deanna,
Akismet is good, but I’ve found it shouldn’t be used alone: it’s better as a second line of defence. I have Bad Behaviour installed on my site, so now Akismet only has to block one or two spam comments a week. As RK Bentley said, another popular front-line spam plugin is Spam Karma.
I had a contact form originally, but the spammers broke it and I started getting floods and floods of the stuff, so I took out the form and reverted to a plain old email address. I’ve just encoded it by hand, but there are plugins out there for WordPress which will scramble your email address.
I was surprised how many spam posts I get a day. I find the whole matter rather sad and frustrating.
I guess the spam must work sometimes, Spyscribbler, the way they keep at it.
I’ll check out th Bad Behaviour, Damselfly.
Yes, the spam comments really are annoying, Corey.
If you want a contact form, this one is supposed to be fairly spam-proof: http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/09/22/wordpress-contact-form-with-spam-protection/
I’ve just installed it on my blog and it was very easy to do. I haven’t had it up long enough to make any spam report. The form goes to a new e-mail address since my old one was so spammed that it’s dying.
Personally, I think contact forms look a little more professional.
Registered now! I hope I do not forget it and need it someday. *shiftyeyes*