After my post a few days back about my love hate relationship with Akismet I was pleased to see Six Apart announce another option for bloggers looking to stem the tide of comment spam – TypePad AntiSpam.
While I’m yet to try it the reports coming in about it are good so far. It’s free (Akismet costs for a commercial license, it has plugins for MovableType and WordPress, it’s open source, and it’s compatible with Akismet (so you can run them together).
There’s was a better alternative to Akismet even before the lauch of Typepad Antispam – Defensio.
In my two months worth of usage, I have found it to maintain over 97% accuracy, which is much higher than what Akismet has offered in the past few months. Defensio is worth a try (I’m not associated with Defensio in anyway, I’m just impressed by their service, though).
I also wrote my thoughts about Defensio in a post – “Defensio antispam WP plugin“.
Hey, this is a great idea for Typepad. Hopefully having both working together will cut out the rest of the spam that comes through. People always find a way to beat the sytem, but it’s nice that they’re doing this.
Both of these running together, awesome.
I’m ready.
Since it works alongside Akismet, I think I’ll set it up to make the perfect defense. I’ve not had many problems with spam so far while using Akismet, but it’s best to be prepared. Great to hear there are strong alternatives out there as well!
I’ve heard good things about defensio.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. If genuine users are notified that their comment has been flagged, they can take the necessary action to have the comment un-flagged. Be it answer a captcha, send an email, answer a question, contact someone, or some hash cash type idea.
That must surely be the only way to deal with false positives. If the user themselves was advised of the block, they’d be able to take action if necessary. Otherwise, you have no option but to check your spam list, which almost defeats the purpose.
Defensio is a good alternative to Akismet but it marks comments as spam according to “spaminess”, it does not only look at the content but also the associated e-mail address. So I’ve had a problem with a lot more ligitimate comments being marked as spam than Akismet.
Typepad Antispam has been much better dealing with this issue so far. But it has only been on my blog for around 24 hours so it’s too soon really draw a comparison.
I´ve actually set up Typepad Antispam now. I´ll have a deeper look at it. really awesome that it works parallel with Akismet…
Pfew!
Really good news. I’ll try it out on my blog. Not really had problems with comment spam, but it will be wise to prepare for that day.
Nice on Darren
Darrin, have you tried running Spam Karma 2? Since switching from Akismet to SK2, i’ve noticed a huge reduction in spam getting through.
Being a ‘newbie’, I’ll keep my ears open but akismet comes with my free wordpress blog. So for now I’ll keep using what works.
I’ll definitely take heed though.
Thanks again.
Excellent, good news. I didn’t know this was it the works, will surely have to give it a try.
Good Lord I hope it helps. I thinks maybe I’ve missed some
quality comments at one of my Blogs because the comment
spam just didn’t make no sense. I’m just too busy to wade
through all of that evil, so I just turned it over to the LORD.
Since I have a TypeKey Account, hope I can count this as
a God send. Once I get my FTP Program working again, then I will install the TypePad Anti-Spam.
Man I don’t like going over to my Host, just to upload files
for my websites. Has anyone had a problem with Your
Cute FTP ever not obeying the click command to load?
Puzzling to me, to say the least. Seems to be so many
around these days that want to have charge over every
computer used online. Greedy Bastards, is what is fitting
for that kind of situation. But Greater is He that is within
the child of God, than he that is in the world.
Thanks Darrin. Be encouraged, Keep Hope Alive!
It’s compatible with Akismet in that it uses the same API for interfacing with the service. That doesn’t mean it will play well with the Akismet plugin. I’d imagine that one or the other would override. Best would be a plugin that submits to both services and does something when they disagree, like put the comment in moderation.
Thanks for the heads up…. I’m wondering, why is Akismet such a pain in the but for so many people, and why is that Typepad Antispan does that corrects the problems presented by Akismet?
Thanks for the tip
I might try it on my financial blog
I think Mark has a point there. IF we have two functions doing the same thing and called as same point its possible that one would pass and other might not. In that case chances are if Akismat is called before it can just submit to spam and it never reaches Typepad antispam and vice versa. Its not a good choice.
Even if both get a chance to interact together like if one disagrees and one not what would wordpress do in that case ? It would accept the last verdict which in case will again depend who is called at the end.
I would suggest do a test keeping just one plugin active else it can be a big mess.
I hope this passes both of them !!!
I’ll be trying this on a customer’s blog network and I’ll write my results up in a note on my website.
To the person above who wrote about Spam Karma 2 – I won’t install that because it’s not accessibility-friendly. If Karma is real, its author will be coming back as tinned meat!
I’ll be checking typepad antispam closely to see if it performs better in that regard.
Yea, but as of recently, it looks like you can no longer post any links in your comments. Even to something like link removed, to show that it goes through without the link.
That was great, it will lessen the opportunity of the spammers to spam a blog. this is one of the best features of typepad. thanks for posting.
-faith-