Any blogger would know that spam is inevitable. Spam can enter your blog anywhere from contact to comment page. It goes without saying that every blogger tries his or her level best to avoid spam. Although, WordPress does have some built in anti spam features, but they are certainly not enough to keep your blog safe.
Here are 12 best WordPress plugins to protect your blog from getting spammed:
1. Akismet
This is a very famous plugin that works by tracking every pingback, trackback and new comment that your blog gets. Then it carries out rigorous testing to unveil a spam. It does this by filtering and blocking spams. At times, it does block genuine comments also, but it being an intelligent plugin, such instances are rare. Its free version is available for personal blogs and commercial one comes at a price of $5 per month.
2. Growmap
The rating of 4.9/5 that this anti spam solution carries with it leaves little to write about. It does not involve as many downloads as Akismet does, but is certainly very effective in preventing automated spam. The only downside is that it is not effective against human spammers. However, when it comes to spambots, Growmap tops the charts.
Spam Free WordPress is the user’s choice for blocking spam in WordPress. The plugin itself boasts of a 100% automated spam kill rate. Its features include no reliance on CAPTCHA and IP blacklisting. This plugin allows the users a choice of having the spam and pingbacks/trackbacks removed automatically.
4. WP-reCAPTCHA
This plugin has received praise from supporters and critics alike. One reason that appears prominent for this is that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter use this plugin as well. It uses ancient words for CAPTCHA verification, which is unlike any other anti spam plugin. Many bots use Optical Character Recognition technique that enables them to read character in CAPTCHA. To prevent this possibility, this plugin uses reCAPTCHA. It distorts the words to create an entirely new image thereby deceiving spambots.
5. WP Hash Cash
It is mainly directed against spam comments on WP blogs. It works by requiring the commentator to use obfuscated Javascript which is used to send a proof that they are using a browser to open the blog and not a bot. Comments that do not pass the test can either be queued by the blog owner or deleted.
6. Spam Stopper
This also makes use of CAPTCHA to validate a comment easy to use plugin that has all its attention directed towards spambots. It uses Javascript to make sure that all the fields in the form are filled correctly and properly.
Once installed, this plugin replaces the contact form with a new form with CAPTCHA and Akismet. With the combined power of these two, this plugin effectively spam proofs the contact forms. This plugin also does not contain templates that can allow users to mess with.
It may appear like any other CAPTCHA validating plugin but it does have more to it than that. It has a distinct feature of allowing the owner of the blog to preset a fixed set of words that shall be displayed in CAPTCHA image. It also features audio CAPTCHA and random font presentation.
This does not work so well against a targeted attack but does fairly well against random ones. It uses Javascript to scramble a word and then piece it together. While the users with Javascript enabled would not notice anything, the ones with Javascript off will have to type the word in a text field.
10. Spam Karma 2
The name is quite suggestive of the activity of the plugin. It assigns a karma score that depends on multiple factors like email address, age of the post etc. A higher karma score indicates a better comment.
11. Simple Trackback Validation
This is a relatively new concept that has caught up widely. This plugin tries to validate the trackbacks received by the blog and allows only the ones that seem legitimate.
12. Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin
This plugin works by adding a client side generated checkbox that asks the author of the comment to confirm that they are not spammers. This way it is effective against automated spambots.