I’ve written previously about my love for the Comment Spam plugin Akismet (and how it’s literally saved me months of work). Of course it’s not perfect and does let some spam through – so today when I read on the Akismet blog that they’ve got a competitor launching (Defensio) I was even happier. While I’ll continue to use and support Akismet I’m glad to see someone else enter the market and my hope is that both tools will continue to improve and provide bloggers with tools to stamp out the destructive force of comment spam. Go get em Akismet and Defensio!
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Defensio looks very interesting, for sure.
Over the past week Akismet has finally got a real test on my blog. With thousands of Stumble traffic, I actually got enough comments to give it a proper run out on the playing field.
Although no spam got through, it did catch several comments that were not spam. I’ve bee checking it every few hours to make sure it hasn’t caught any more legit comments.
Idea for next poll, Darren… “Do you monitor the comments that Akismet catches?”. :)
That’s why Akismet is default plugin for WordPress. Oh, and don’t forget Hello Dolly!
I haven’t tried Defensio yet but its name sounds so Harry Potter-ish!
I wish we could combine the best of the best instead of relying on one anti-spam service. A distributed anti-spam service sounds like a dream.
Good to have a backup service ready to switch on if Akismet has down time
thanks for the heads up Darren
That is an excellent suggestion for a new poll. I never monitored my comment spam folder due to a lack of time but after a few complaints about comments not showing up on my blog I started checking it now and then.
The only problem is “now and then” means every 15 minutes or every hour if you want to keep up.
Yeah, was reading about Defensio yesterday. Going to install it on http://www.techmilk.com next week and see how it does.
This + the 0.3 version of the WP Super Cache plugin should make for quite a team. The Super cache is already proving highly valuable. A few diggs and reddits and the site stayed smooth as butter!
Thanks for mentioning Darren!
Sunny
Seems to be interesting. I just installed it on my blog. Let’s see if it works properly, or not.
Akismet has caught 44,045 spam for you since you first installed it. Yikes.
:)
I’m very happy with Akismet at the moment, which is installed on all of my blogs – the ones that need it anyway!
@Jamie, same here – for me Askimet very rarely lets spam through yet I usually have to fish out at least one genuine comment. I label them as ‘not spam’ but they keep getting put in there. I think some of my commenters have somehow managed to get their IP addresses on some kind of blacklist.
This is really good news for all of us bloggers. Askimet is great but there is nothing but a bit of competition to make people up their game even more!
I have also had a couple of comments get classified as spam with Askimet – but the amount it has stopped is huge in comparison.
two anti-spam heads are better than one
I am amazed that nobody has mentioned Spam Karma.
It’s the Daddy of comment spam plugins!
And no. I’m not connected with the developers. I just happen to love the plugin :)
Darren, if you like Akismet, you should give Spam Karma 2 a try. For me, it was far superior than Akismet.
Honestyly, I don’t understand what is the advantage of a anti-span system like those, if I have a catcha system (letters and numbers in a graphic for human validation). Is it not enought?
I’ve been using Defensio for about a month now and I really like it. My favorite part about it is the different percentages of spaminess for each comment.
I’m a happy user of Akismet and Bad Behaviour, but the problem I am having is that my server host is beginning to complain as the amount of time wp-comments.php get requested, most of them by spammers.
Any suggestions with dealing with it, as I don’t get that many hits to justify an upgrade?
Yay, it’s for textpattern too. Although the txp version of Defensio isn’t ready yet.
What is the integration with Defensio and WordPress? None because they are competitors?
I always use Spam Karma 2 with the moderate plugin installed. It works well for me except for a trickle of trackback spam, which htaccess takes care of rather nicely. And unlike Defensio, you can’t beat the price.
@ Omar… unfortunately, more and more spam bots are able to get past captcha forms without any trouble. To show that, I was using a captcha method on the signup form of a popular forum that I manage. Each day, I was getting about ten signups from automated spam bots that were easily getting past the captcha form.
lol
it is good to see some healthy competition!
I hope their competition means the end of spam!
Hm…
I wonder if you could run them both at the same time…
@dan – we’ve built a Defensio WordPress plug-in, so you simply download and install it to WP like you would any other plug-in!
@brian – no, unfortunately, that would not be a very good use case. defensio has been designed to handle your entire spam burden for optimal performance
thanks darren, and to the whole community here for the feedback!
I always use Spam Karma as well and have never had a problem with it catching the wrong spam comments… I found it to be better than akismet.
Thats the thing I do with any new blog for my customers: Removig akismet from the wp-plugin dir and uploading spam karma. It works a very reliable way.
I agree with Anne- the name does sound a bit Harry Potterish. In fact, it even inspired a little fanfic that I’ve written on my site using defensio as a magical spell, something like Imperio and Crucio in the series by JK. Do feel free to read it ( it would be better if you have some knowledge about the Potter series)
Akismet has proved to be extremely competent- I’ve never seen a reason to switch.
Any ways, good luck to the Defensio guys.
I have been a beta tester for Defensio. When there is a lot of spam, Defensio is extremely powerful (much powerful than Akismet). I applied for Defensio when the number of spam comments on my blog shot up suddenly. But it decreased with the same speed it rose and now there in no more spam trouble. But now Defensio is catching some of legit comments too (my blog is not a heavily commented blog). Overall, I am much more satisfied with Defensio than Akismet.
@Omar … no single method exists that will block all spam … not even hiring overly sensitive people with short tempers to moderate.
Even if you cascade Captcha / Akismet / Defensio / irritable people — if you get enough spam, some will get through. I don’t expect perfection; I’m just looking for a good signal to noise ratio.
It’s the Daddy of comment spam plugins!