Users of Spam Karma 2 (a WP comment spam plugin) might have noticed increases in comment spam in the last week. Dr Dave (the guy behind SK2) has written a post with a little information on this and the struggle he faces in getting on top of it. He also asks users of SK2 to consider a donation so that he can dedicate more time to fixing it. I for one am someone willing to put some money up and encourage others who want to see better tools developed to combat comment spammers to do likewise.
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.
In my experience, Akismet is much better than SK2.
yeah I’ve heard that but it also charges up to $200 per month for a commercial licence and needs WP 1.5.2 or more and I’m .1 off that at present :-)
It’s $5/month for probloggers :)
“In my experience, Akismet is much better than SK2.”
In my experience, Akismet sticks *all* comments (except my own) into the moderation queue and has a real penchant for labeling trackbacks as spam. So I said goodbye to Akismet and went back to SK2.
Personally, I think it’s a wonder that anyone uses Akismet at all.
JMHO.
they define ‘probloggers’ as earning up to $500 per month. Then it goes into a commercial licence at a cost of $200 per month to use it.
Only thing I’m not sure of is whether the $500 earnings are per blog that you use it on and if the $5 and $200 fees are on a per blog basis.
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Personally I’m using WP-Gatekeeper at the moment, and combined with a strong blacklist (the standard one) I’m lucky if I get more than 1 or 2 pieces of spam a day.
You can’t use Spam Karma on commercial blog though can you? I might be wrong but I’ve always avoided it because I thought the licence wouldn’t cover me.
Darren, you might try WP Hashcash if you haven’t. I have yet to see a spam comment get through – except for a few manually-typed ones – and have never seen a false positive.
I predict that we’ll all be switching to “registered users only” for comments within the next year, but in the meantime this works.
I am using Akismet provided by Yahoo :)
Hmm, I read it differently Darren:
“so we’re saying if you’re making more than $500/mo from your blog we ask that you use a $5/mo pro-blogger Akismet API key”
Rian, I’ve been using Akismet on a number of blogs and haven’t had the problem you experienced at all, that sounds strange.
I know exactly how you feel about it…
http://ninodolor.com.ar/nino/archives/23
:)
I’ve been using Spam Karma for the last three months, and it seems to work exceptionally well…in fact it works so well that you almost forget it’s there.
I plan on donating, because it’s been a godsend :)
@ Anthony,
Actually, according to the developer you CAN use SK2 on a commercial blog…
“you can still use SK2 on a commercial blog, the only restriction is on packaging and distributing or otherwise selling SK2 for profit”
Hope that clears things up :)
Rian, Akismet only sticks comments in the moderation queue when it can’t contact the Akismet server. Since my monitoring has shown it to be up pretty much continuously for the last few months, I’d suggest you check with your Web host and ensure that nothing they’ve done is preventing Akismet from communicating.
(Disclaimer: I’m one of the people responsible for Akismet, even though my part was quite small.)
Michael,
I have a dedicated server that I control. Nothing is/was blocked. I dunno what’s up.