Following Thilak’s results, I installed Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam Image Plugin for WordPress to test.

I’m much against the idea of using Captcha for my blog, because of the problems with accessibility. However, of late I have been getting a lot of spam.

Even though Bad Behavior has blocked 10000+ access attempts in the last seven days, a good portion of spam has been getting through.

This has been caughty by Spam Karma 2 successfully. However, they are still getting through and still consuming bandwidth.

Hence, I felt the need of installing Peter’s plugin. Thilak has found the amount of spam being blocked reducing from 1000 to around 5 a day.

I will be monitoring this for the next few days. The plugin is easy to use and install. The image is also clearly visible, so you shouldn’t face any problems with reading it.

If you do face any problems please email me, so that I can take necessary action.

I had to make some changes to the code to make it XHTML 1.1 compatible. Will write detailed installation instructions tomorrow.

The latest version of Bad Behavior i.e. 2.0.6 includes a new check where it looks up various blacklists.

A new blocking method using realtime blackhole lists is being used to determine if a post originates from a known spam source, open proxy, etc. GET requests are not screened. Links are provided to blackhole list removal procedures through the fix it yourself link.

And my “darling” ISP Exatt has all its IPs blacklisted across most of these blacklists.

A direct consequence is that I get blocked out of commenting on my own blog.

I had to switch back to 2.0.5. Unfortunately, I am blocked out from commenting of a good number of WordPress blogs which are using 2.0.6, e.g. Mark Jaquith’s and MaxPower

I’ve tried delisting the IPs manually from the blackhole lists, but this has become too much of a trouble because I get assigned a dynamic IP everytime I login

Anybody have any idea of how to get this problem solved. I have yet to contact Exatt. And, I am confused on how exactly to get through to them. Calling my local ISP office of Exatt is useless because they only look after the WAN and recharging etc.

I have just released the Bad Behavior Stats plugin v2.1

Updates since the last release.

• Link to Bad Behavior homepage fixed
• Title attributes added to the BBStats and Bad Behavior Links
• New variable %totalcount% added for displaying total number of access attempts if verbose logging is enabled.
• Now, admin functions and wp-dash functions are only declared if on the admin page and if wp-dash is installed respectively, thereby saving on processing time.

Read more and download the plugin>>

I have just released the Bad Behavior Stats plugin v2.0

Updates since the last release.

• Plugin now works with Bad Behavior 1.x and 2.x
• Only counts the number of blocked attempts.
• Number of blocked attempts can now be viewed under Options >> BB Stats as well.
• Few miscellaneous fixes

Read more and download the plugin>>

The other while checking my Siltide Sitescore the other day, I found that it kept reporting that it couldn’t find my site.

I could see that my blog was working and I was even able to validate it as well. Just meant a probable blocking of the site.

On disabling Bad Behavior I found that I was able to get the score thereby pointing out an error with either Silktide or Bad Behavior.

I checked my logs and found that Silktide gives a blank User-Agent and so Bad Behavior blocks the site. This is something I support because spammers use this attack your site.

Wrote to Silktide and promptly got a reply saying that they will see what they can do with the next version of the software.

Have taken a temporary way out by adding this to the Whitelist, but this will continue to be a problem unless scripts and software start sending correct user-agents.

Afterall, how many IPs am I going to add?

Update: This tutorial is now superceded by A Comprehensive Guide to Protecting Your Blog from Spam.

Comment spam is something every blogger is really really afraid of. Over the past two years that I have been using WordPress this is one problem that I have faced on and off.
I realized that the amount of spam I was receiving was is direct relation to my popularity. (and I wasn’t that know then)

After a lot of experimenting, I have finalized settled down on the following. I’m pretty much spam free for now.

Firstly, get Bad Behavior installed. Bad Behavior blocks spam by checking Referer and a lot of other things the moment it touches your site. It runs silently in the background protecting you. Optionally, you can add my Bad Behavior Stats Plugin to display the number of blocked attempts on your blog.

Next, get hold of Spam Karma 2. Spam Karma is a comment spam protector. It provides many checks and drastically reduces the amount of comment, trackback and pingback spam. Optionally, add Spam Karma 2 Stats.

With just these two plugins installed I had almost zero spam on my site. However, I recommend a few additional things you can do.

Get hold of Moderate Plugin for SK2 and follow the instructions for installing it. This plugin will ensure that new posters will land into moderation for your approval. So even if a person gets through Bad Behavior and Spam Karma 2, you still choose whether you want to approve this comment or not. Believe, I’ve used it many times!

Also, to reduce email spam do not have any mailto: links on your site. Instead make use of contact forms or email plugins like my Transpose Email plugin to protect your email from harvesters.
Two popular contact forms for WordPress are PXS Mail and WP-Contact Form.

Yet another step to prevent bad bots and spam is to use your .htaccess file to block them. Read Blocking bad bots and site rippers (aka offline browsers). Here you will find a nice long list of what you will need to enter into your .htaccess to block the bots and spam.

Additional resources worth checking are:

• Combating Comment Spam
• Spam Tools
• Tackling Comment Spam

I’m pretty much spam free today. So how about you?

Have just released the latest version of my Bad Behavior Stats plugin viz. v1.6.

It is now compatible with Bad Behavior 1.2.
It now counts both 403 and 412 errors.

Read more and download the plugin>>

Have just released the latest version of my Bad Behavior Stats plugin viz. v1.5.

The plugin now has a brand new options page. Have dumped the variables $count_only and $returns.

Now the text to be displayed can be configured directly from the Options >> BB Stats page.

Also available is a widget for WP-Dash, which is a plugin that replaces your original WordPress Dashboard with a whole new pluggable one.
I think this makes me among the first authors to do so

Read more and download the plugin>>

Released v1.4 of my Bad Behavior Stats plugin today.

v1.4 is a major update.

You can now set the various options through Options >> BB Stats

Read about the plugin>>

Released v1.2 of my Bad Behavior Stats plugin today.

v1.2 has the following updates:
Now, the number of days variable $bb_no_of_days is passed to the function as an argument, which means the plugin file need no longer be modified during install / upgrade.
The function has also been changed to reflect this.

Also added another another argument that is passed viz. $only403. Setting this to false will retreive all the errors that are logged, not just 403 errors.

Lastly, following a suggestion by Novac, I created another variable $add_footer setting which will enable automatic adding of the stats to wp_footer. It is set to false in the plugin file and the file needs to be editted in case it has to be set to true.

Read about the plugin>>

Note that this IS NOT Bad Behavior plugin. It is a stats plugin for Bad Behavior. This plugin is useless if you do not have Bad Behavior installed