Semalt Shares Vital Tips And Tools To Combat WordPress Comment Spam

If you have a popular news site or blog, the chances are you will receive lots of spam comments every day. Thankfully, we have learned to combat spam comments in WordPress, and a lot of techniques have been introduced with time. If you are a newbie and don't know how to get started, you should bear in mind these vital tips and tools to combat spam comments in WordPress as explained by Igor Gamanenko, an awesome expert from Semalt.

1. Activate the Akismet plugin:

It's safe to mention that Akismet is one of the most famous and valuable plugins for WordPress sites and blog. You don't need to download it as this plugin comes pre-installed on every WordPress account. But you would have to adjust its settings according to your requirements manually. Akismet is the most trusted tool when it comes to getting rid of spam comments. It automatically filters useless comments and prevents you from publishing spam things on your blog.

2. Nofollow Comment Links:

The new bloggers and webmasters believe that using plugins to remove the nofollow attributes from the comment author link is safe, but they are wrong. In fact, both nofollow and dofollow links are essential for improving the search engine rankings of your website. Even the non-spam comments are submitted by real humans so you cannot prevent them with ordinary plugins. Instead, you should manually remove those comments that look illegitimate to you. If you are not using any plugin in this regard, move to our third tip.

3. Reduce Comment Spam with Cookies:

This method is useful only when you know how the cookies work and how to get them activated. The Cookies for Comments plugin is one of the coolest and get your works done easily. Most of the spam and bots are automated scripts, and you can save your site from them by reducing the number of spam comments using cookies.

4. Block the Spam Comment Bots with Honeypot:

The Honeypot technology is one of the most effective when it comes to tricking spambots online. First, you have to install and activate the WP-Spam Fighter plugin. Once activated, go to the Settings » WP-Spam Fighter area and don't forget to enable the honeypot protection. It will definitely protect your site from spam comments and bots on a daily basis.

5. Add the Captcha Verification:

To add the captcha verification, the best tool is WP-reCAPTCHA. With this program, you can easily enable the captcha challenges on the comment forms, preventing the hackers and spammers from irritating you daily with spam comments. Let me here tell you that humans and bots can only insert this captcha cannot even recognize the words mentioned in the captcha; thus, you will be assured that your site is protected against useless and spam comments.

6. Disable Comments on the Media Attachments:

The best part of WordPress is that it will automatically create the image attachments and pages where your visitors can see the pictures and leave the comments as per their desires. This will automatically prevent you from receiving spam comments as real humans will interact with your website. You can disable the comments on your media files, content and relevant attachments. Turning off those comments will save your WordPress site from spammers and hackers.