Akismet OUT GASP IN

• Tweet
• Share

• Tweet
• Share

Spam is the word that is allergic to anyone. Internet is no exception. There is spam in the email, messages, friend requests, Facebook, Twitter, other social media, websites, content and ya, in the blogosphere.

Among various kinds of spam, the most troublesome kind of spam in the blogosphere is the comment spam. Given the fact that commenting on blogs is an efficient way to increase the number of backlinks comment spam is just on its peak these days.

So every blogger needs a defence perimeter since it will be stupid to sit and moderate every comment that comes through, especially when the blog is well established. And with WordPress there are plugins, ya.

Going with the waters, I opted for the Akismet plugin, found it in the WordPress plugin database, installed and activated it. I sat back with a sigh and concentrated on writing content and moderating comments that came to the comments folder. Usually there are hundreds of spam comments in the spam folder which I never opened and usually just emptied the folder.

Life went on. One day there were just 12 spam comments in the spam folder; I just got curious and checked out what was in the spam folder. I was SHOCKED.

There was one comment from a very distinguished A-lister blogger (I wouldn’t dare to mention her name here, and that would be an insult ). Fine. Then on I had to make sure that none of the genuine comments end up in the spam folder.

Okay I am not against Akismet in any way. Indeed, I should thank Akismet for keeping me away from spam for about 5 months. But there came a time when I had to move on. Here are my main concerns with Akismet:

I don’t know what algorithm Akismet follows but it is just lame. Period.

False positives just happen always. And the biggest set back is that Akismet never learns. If I un-spam a comment from a particular commenter, I expect Akismet to mark future comments from that commenter to be safe; but it doesn’t. In addition, blocking of genuine comments happen so often that the blogger has to put more effort in scanning through the spam folder to always find genuine posts in them.

So, I decided to find an alternate. Here comes GASP to the rescue. What is GASP? Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin. It is free!

Now the bullet points-

GASP is just a simple solution. It does not involve any black box approach to sort out spam and genuine comments. It follows a very simple approach. Ask people to click on a tick box to confirm that they aren’t spamming.

What really is good about this?

1. You don’t ask people to type a CAPTCHA code. You and I know that it is quite irritating, if we have to reload again and again to get an understandable code and then type it in without mistakes. I would just not comment rather.

2. You don’t ask people to do maths. I won’t comment on such a blog, seriously.

Fine. But there is a little catch. I will tell you what. There are two types of spammers.

1. The spam bots which just attempt to post comments on your blog in an automated way.

2. Humans who are getting paid to comment on various blogs for the purpose of link building.

Now, GASP can deal with type 1 but sadly not with type 2. But there is a guarantee. Type 1 constitutes 95% of spammers and type 2 is just 5%. Get it?

Wait I am not done yet. I have got to say little bit about customizing this plugin. Blacklisting.

You can blacklist keywords and links which you think won’t be appropriate to appear on your blog (of course it is YOUR blog and YOU decide what gets in and what doesn’t). For instance you can ask GASP to hold a comment for moderation if it contains more than two links and/or if it has particular keywords like “Poker”, “Porn”, “Erection” and so on.

And another important point- When you have made the decision to switch to GASP, you have got to turn off Akismet. Don’t be scared! I know how insecure one feels when asked to turn off a long-used anti-spam thing. But you have my guarantee. I have put it to work successfully here at Find All Answers.

If you choose to keep Akismet, you have a problem. You still will have entries in the spam folder which you have to be concerned about. There could still be genuine comments in the spam folder. So just get rid of Akismet.

And, one final word. I am getting 0 to 1 comment at the max per day since I got GASP plugged in; and, I am shouting that out loud. You know how it feels to see your spam folder with zero comments.

So what are you waiting for?

Image credit

Tagged as: comment spam, GASP, growmap anti spambot plugin, plugin, wordpress

Article by JaneSheeba

+Jane is the founder of Problogging Success. She is an expert blogger, consultant, freelance writer and blog designer. Don't forget to get your hands on two FREE Ebooks she offers.

Jane has written 244 awesome posts for Problogging Success.