RSS Feeds: I Gave Up and Installed the WP-Ban Plugin
Yep, I got tired of reviewing the spam messages caught by the Akismet plugin. It does the job it was designed to do very well.
The problem is, comment spam arrives in bursts. Very rarely does one of them get past that plugin. Well, because I tired of it, I added another great plugin: WP-Ban
If you read through the forum, you'll see that I just recently furnished some code and ideas to make it even better.
Update March 8, 2007:
I disabled this plugin. It's much more trouble than it's worth. The PC zombies that send out the blog spam move from IP address to IP address faster than I keep up with them. After all this time, the number of spam comments caught by the Akismet filter has not decreased. Only one spam comment got past the filter in the last two weeks and it was easy enough to simply delete it.
My original thoughts on all this proved to be correct. It's not worth the time or the trouble to try to block spammers. Filtering is still the best solution.
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Had you considered using a different spam filter? I've been using Bad Behavior since version 1 and its not let me down. I have one correspondant in India that can't comment because she has an ISP that has too many offenders on it, but usually, the plugin only blocks what looks like a bot. I'm still trying for a solution for her, but she's the only one that has notified me that there's a problem. I hadn't bothered to set up Akismet, as it relied on yet another server on the internet to render my pages. Its a thought. The ban plugin is a lot of work.
Well, Akismet does the filtering work. I investigated several plugins and WP-Ban seemed to be the best way to reduce what needed to be filtered. I have another idea which I think is better, but I haven't worked on it yet. It's not a plugin and it doesn't require a third-party server.
Actually, the ban plugin is easy, it's making sure that I don't accidentally ban the wrong people that's hard.
I've actually deactivated it and am collecting a list of IP address, which I am adding to a deny list in my cPanel (I am hosted) admin page. I don't even want them to access the site. No too many get through BB2, though. Since I have 1st post moderation, I approve or deny all comments and those that I recognize as spam, I add the IP to the list. Those that aren't, get through (even if you disagree with me ;) )
I'll be interested to see what you get when your code comes together, though.
I must say I am quite impressed by the Spam karma plug-in for word-press; lots of options, and very good at blocking spam, and not a single false positive in about 6 months.
I don't use anything but Akismet now. But not because it's better than anything else. I monitor comments daily, so if one slips through it's gone within 12 hours.