Fighting spam is a constant battle for all bloggers, and we do our best here to keep the spammers at bay, implementing some of the most robust anti-spam technology available. A number of bloggers have noticed an increase in spam lately, so thanks for starting this topic. We'll use it to try and help bloggers ebb the tide of spam, or at least manage it better…

First, we did notice, however, that you did not have your TypePad AntiSpam plugin activated, so we just went ahead and did that for you. This should help. Tripawds Supporter blogs also have access to the WP SpamFree plugin for enhanced spam protection. (Which you did have activated.)

Anti-Spam Plugins

All Tripawds bloggers are provided with the TypePad Anti-Spam Plugin. One of the first actions when setting up a new blog should be to ensure this is activated from the Plugins menu of your dashboard.

The WP-SpamFree plugin is also available for Tripawds Supporter blogs. This should be activated immediately upon upgrade of any blog. WP-SpamFree also has a few enhanced options to ensure it catches the most spam it can.

From the Plugins -> WP-SpamFree tab of your dashboard, ensure that the "M2" option is selected. This will use two methods to set cookies and virtually eliminate all automated spambots. Do not enable Logging Mode nor select Log All Coments! 

Optionally, you might consider unchecking the option "Allow users behind proxy servers to comment?" While many spammers hide behind proxy servers, doing so may block certain legitimate comments. We at Tripawds for example – and other satellite internet users – might be blocked from commenting since our connection is via proxy.

The WP-SpamFree Enhanced Comment Blacklist is another helpful option. Instead of just sending spam comments to moderation, they will be completely blocked. This also adds a link in the comment notification emails that will let you blacklist a commenter's IP with one click. (Useful if you receive repetitive human spam or harassing comments from a particular commenter.) Just keep in mnd that most spammers will mask their IP as well, so any address you block may end up being some legitimate reader's down the road.

Please note that WP-SpamFree may prohibit some visually impaired readers who may use certain screen readers from commenting on blog posts, since it relies on Javascript for human verification.

Wordpress Settings

The only sure way to eliminate spam comments entirely is to disallow readers from commenting on articles from the Settings -> Discussion tab of yor blog dashboard. (But what fun is that!?) There are a couple other Settings in the Discussion tab which may help.

Disallowing link notifications will stop pingback and trackback spam – where other websites link to your posts –  but not block posted spam comments.

Requiring comment authors to provide a name and email address will limit some automated spambots.

Requiring users to be registerred and logged in will only allow comments from Tripawds members. This should stop all spam, but it will also prohibit anyone who is not a registerred Tripawds member from posting comments.

By selecting Administrator Approval, comments can be posted but none will appear on your blog until you approve them. This provides the opportunity to mark any as spam before they appear, but future comments from known "good" authors will still require moderation. So we recommend selecting the next option so a Comment author must have a previously approved comment. This will allow anyone who's had a comment approved, to comment again without moderation.

Action

Never reply to spam comments, and always be sure to mark them as spam

– don’t just trash them. Do this from the Comment moderation tab in your dashboard so WordPress will learn to identify what is

spam on your blog. You can also block known spammers from commenting

further on your blog by adding their email, URL or IP address to your comment

blacklist from the Settings -> Discussion tab in your dashboard.

Replying to spammers will often only result in more spam, but usually they use fake addresses. If any of your comment replies do make it back through to real human  spammers, then your blog domain will likely find its way the the dark side … boards and forums where evil spammers share sites to attack.

The best tool for fighting spam is the "Spam" button found in your Dashboard, and an acknowledgement that spammers are like cockroaches who will always be infesting the interwebs. Never underestimate the power of your delete key.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding. We hope this helps.