The http:BL WordPress Plugin, Another Anti-Spam Measure

Back on April 26th, I wrote about a blocking list that will eventually be more effective than Akismet. In fact, I titled it "Move Over Akismet, A New Sheriff Is In Town". I have been a member of Project Honey Pot almost as long as it has been in existence. I think I signed up as a member two months after it started. I used to run my own ftp, mail, and web servers from home using a business account.

Being among the first members, I received the announcement that they had established this blocking list fairly soon after it was published. I was the guy who submitted it to Digg. Apparently, it didn't seem to impress too many people because it has only been dugg 441 times (when I checked a few minutes ago). I spotted a thread on Blog Catalog last night which talked about the plugin. The thread doesn't seem to be very popular either.

Project Honey Pot's blocking list can only get more effective as more bloggers adapt their blogs to it. It's a simple process:

• Sign up for membership at Project Honey Pot.
• If you're blog is self-hosted, install either a honey pot or a "QuickLink" to someone else's honey pot. If you're not self-hosted, you can still install the QuickLink.
• Get your API key from Project Honey Pot.
• Install the plugin.

I've checked my log since installing the plugin. It has already blocked a lot of comment spam and email address harvesters. It's not completely effective yet because the project had concentrated on email spam until this blocking list was created. We need more bloggers to set up honey pots to make it really, really effective.

You can get the plugin at Jano's weblog.

***

Blog Appreciation:

Another blog I just added to my feed reader is I Help You Blog. It has only been online for something like two months, but it continues to grow in popularity and already has a Google PR of 4.

Articles With Related Content:

• Using Any Blocking List For A Blog Is A Huge Mistake
• Updated: http:BL and Simple Spam Filter
• I'm Getting Zero Spam Comments
• The Final Word on Comment Spam
• I'm in Need of a WordPress Plugin

Get Social and: Stumble It | Zoom It | Digg It | Propel It | Plug It | Sphinn It

May 9th, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Categories: WordPress | Tags: plugins, spam | Full Article Feed | Summary Article Feed | Comments Feed | Full Articles by Email | Respond | Trackback URL

2. Chris on May 9th, 2007 at 5:46 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Anything to squish the spam.

   I shall give it a try.

3. James on May 9th, 2007 at 5:59 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Spam Karma 2 has been doing a great job for me. Think it would muck up things if I installed this alongside SK2?

   More choices are good, and if I can help em out without losing my protection already in place, I'd love to.

4. RT Cunningham on May 9th, 2007 at 6:02 pm (Reply)
   
   

   This works with SK2 and Akismet in place. It simply redirects the spammer to a honey pot page that either you install or link to through the project. Spam is still going to get past it until their list has more comment spam ip addresses added to it. They do not block dynamic IPs that are used as zombies unless they are identified by the honey pots. So having another filter in place is a good idea.

5. hari on May 9th, 2007 at 7:22 pm (Reply)
   
   

   My blog might be in a state of transition, depending on how good b2evolution version 2.0 comes out when it's released.

   If they have a good importer for WP and I'm able to preserve permanent links, I'm going to move my blog over. I am getting irritated with the way features keep getting added in WP again and again and being a popular blogging tool, WP installations also gets hit with a lot more spam than other blogs.

   It's not 100% certain, but after the b2evolution developers personally commented on my review and offered to let me have the development snapshot for testing and feedback, I have a much more positive opinion of the b2evolution community than the WP community.

6. RT Cunningham on May 9th, 2007 at 7:28 pm (Reply)
   
   

   If and when you move to b2evolution, I'm sure they'll already have a plugin just like this. If not, you could always convert it yourself. It doesn't look too hard.

7. hari on May 9th, 2007 at 7:40 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Yes. I think this honey-pot anti-spam is generic - not specific to any particular CMS…

8. Baxter Tocher on May 9th, 2007 at 8:58 pm (Reply)
   
   

   Thanks for the heads-up about the plugin, RT. By chance, I had set up a honey pot on The Far Corner at the weekend (1 harvester visit so far), but I hadn't yet looked into http:BL. Plugin now installed.