You may have noticed that a spambot has found my blog, and I am regularly deleting 5-10 comments a day that slip through my spam filter. The spam filter (Akismet) is filtering out roughly 500 comments a day from this nasty little program, all of them nonsense strings of words that include something about gambling.
Unfortunately, sometimes real comments from real people also get sent to the spam file by Akismet, and I have to search through the hundreds of fake messages if I want to find the missing real ones. I am tired of doing that.
So even though the new site is not quite ready, I am going to move to the new domain name, ToddledDredge.com. If you read this blog on RSS feed, go ahead and update to that address. If you link to me on your blogroll, please update that also.
I will have a new post up on the new blog tonight, and after a day or two, I will change this old blog to registered commenters only. If the new blog gets targeted by spambots too, I will have to introduce some kind of comment verification system. I know typing those jumbled words is a nuisance, so we will wait and see if the move solves the problem first.
re: the spam issue: I don’t know if you’re MT-powered or not at the new blog(doesn’t look like it, but I am no expert in this), but there’s an easy little add-on for MT that has absolutely eliminated my spam comments (and I was getting 40-50 a day until I started using it). It’s much, much easier on commenters than a captcha. I can’t remember the name of it, but if you’re interested let me know and I’ll find out. You can see it in action at my blog if you’re interested.
I had the same problem, which is why I added the reCapcha widget. I love it and nobody has had any trouble with it, far as I know… actually, it’s added a lot of fun!
Reggardless, congtats on the new domain… will see you there!
Ugh, sorry for the typos… commenting left-handed while nursing!
I don’t LOVE word verification, but I don’t mind it terribly, either. Spam is just INFURIATING. AWFUL. NO FUN.
As are creepy anonymous comments. They suck, too.
Hey – if you use the comment timeout plug in and set it so that no one can comment on posts older than, say, 10 days, it’ll wipe out most of the spam. FOR REAL.
Signed,
Someone Who Was Once Getting Around 500 Spam Comments A Day Before The Comment Timeout Plugin Was Installed, Oh Yes Ma’am
Can’t wait to read your new posts at your new domain! Will the past posts be available to read? I haven’t finished the 12 Days of Christmas yet and really want to!
I hate captchas and I hope you don’t have to go that route. If you are self-hosting toddleddredge.com there are other plugins you can use on top of akismet that should help. Another thing that might help is changing your settings so that comments from new visitors have to be approved first. It’s much more fun to approve new comments than to have to delete nasty spam. Ok, I’m off to update my feed now.
There’s one more option:
http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/spam-filter/
I was getting at least 20 poker/pillz spams a day before I installed it. Now I get about 7 per month, and only have to moderate maybe 2 (the rest go straight to the spam filter). It only forces commenters to go through the captcha process if something about their behavior is “suspicious”, so no visitors have complained.
The good news is, very few comments even make it to the spam filter, let alone the moderation page, which makes checking the moderation page for accidental blocked comments from decent folk that much easier.