Comment spam is the harsh reality, and every green behind the ears, enthusiastic, unprepared blogger will be staggered by the sheer volume they receive of it. WordPress can help, but you need to mentally prepare yourself for the hard fact that more than 99% of the comments you will receive will be spam. If you leave the issue unattended, the spam comments can overtake your site database and get you permanently banned from the search engine index. In this in-depth tutorial, we’ll learn how to stop WordPress spam comments using different solutions to solve this problem.
Stop Spam Comments Now with Akismet WordPress Plugin
Need relief from comment spam? You’re about to get it.
Activate the free Anti-spam plugin on your site now. Then, when the spam stops, you can come back and read my explanation below.
Here’s What You Need to Know:
The vast majority of comment spam is automated. It doesn’t come from people who visit your site and submit spam comments. It comes from software that submits them automatically.
The automated software spammers use these days is intense. They scrape the web for thousands of sites to comment on in their niche and use multi-threading to comment on dozens of sites simultaneously. It’s no challenge to submit tens of thousands of spam comments daily. So, you need one of the following solutions to solve it and stop spam comments on your WordPress website.
Sounds pretty bad for us, huh? Well, the good news is they’re not that hard to stop.
There are ways to distinguish automated bot visitors from real human visitors. For instance, they can be tricked into doing things a natural person would never do (like filling in an invisible form field).
The Solution for Comment Spam
Anti-spam does a great job of blending techniques like this to detect bots; the outcome is phenomenal. In my experience, it blocks 100% of automatic spam. So, Just activate the plugin, and you’re ready with comment spam.
I’ve also had great results with the WP Bruiser plugin over the last few months. It’s more customizable and feature-rich than Anti-spam, but they both work well.
The popular Akismet plugin also handles comment spam effectively, but it requires a monthly subscription to run on your site. Moreover, it has a free version that works great.
Disable Comments – Remove Comments & Stop Spam [Multi-Site Support]
Instantly allow or disallow comments from any post type (page, post, or media) in WordPress to block spammers and completely control your entire website. WP-CLI supports and controls comments also via XML-RPC and REST-API!
Override all comment-related settings on your site and manage your comments the way you want. Choose which posts, pages, or media should allow site visitors to comment, and configure disabling comments accordingly.
Do you have multiple websites? Get rid of irrelevant comments on the web by disabling the comments plugin. Easily configure comment-related settings using a stunning and attractive app-like interface.
Disable Comments Completely to Stop Spam Comments Now
The first option only requires you to disable WordPress comments entirely. Maybe your company doesn’t use or doesn’t want reviews. So, to protect yourself from spam comments, you can simply disable them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to turn off the “Allow people to comment on new articles” option, found under Settings > Discussions.
To disable comments entirely, go to the Default Post Settings section at the top of the Discussion Settings screen and disable these options. This will disable comments on all new posts. You can also disable pingbacks.
Note that comments on your published posts will not be disabled. You must do this for each post individually if you want to disable these. We’ll show you how to do this later to stop spam comments in your WordPress.
Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the Save Changes button. All comments are now disabled.
Disable Anonymous Comments
Another option is to disable anonymous comments. By default, native WordPress comments ask visitors to provide four pieces of information: comment, name, email, and website.
They are not required if anonymous comments are enabled. This instantly opens your site to many spam bots constantly crawling through the comment form on the site.
To disable anonymous comments in WordPress, simply enable the Comment author must fill in the name and email option under Settings > Discussions.
This makes it harder for bots to leave automated comments (which make up the bulk of spam), but it’s not impossible. It may also stop people from leaving malicious comments or trolling your site.
Reduce or Disallow Links in Comments
Spam comments often contain links because they are posted to drive traffic to the spammer’s website. You can block comments with links entirely or reduce the number of links allowed in comments.
In the “Comment Moderation” section, select the number of links a comment must have before it awaits moderation. Allow links using 2, or block comments with links using 1.
Alternatively, select a higher number to allow comments with multiple links. Comments with more links than allowed will be moderated by moderators before being published.
Block WordPress Spam Comments with Captcha
Another popular option is to use a captcha, which is some form or question to prove that the visitor is a human. You can implement this strategy in your WordPress site using many great plugins, most of which are free.
These may be unpopular with users, mainly if you use variants that require users to identify images containing particular objects. But more and more sites are now using captcha fields with a simple “I’m not a robot” checkbox that robots can’t fill.
You can implement these solutions to solve spam strategy in your WordPress site using many great plugins, most of which are free.
reCaptcha by BestWebSoft
We’re big fans of Google’s version of CAPTCHA, or reCAPTCHA as they call it. Google is probably the cleanest and easiest to use, one that doesn’t spoil the user experience by asking cryptic questions or displaying hard-to-read letters.
You don’t want someone to leave your site just because they’re frustrated with CAPTCHA. BestWebSoft’s Google Captcha (reCAPTCHA) plugin is a great way to implement this functionality on your WordPress site.
Instead of letting you read illegible letters and numbers or identify items on photos, the plugin asks users to tick a box to confirm they’re not robots. This box can only be checked manually.
To set it up, you need to use Google’s Captcha API to register your site, then select the reCAPTCHA v2 checkbox or reCAPTCHA v3 to use JavaScript to check for spam without the user having to do anything. You can access it via the link in the plugin settings screen.
You will then get a site key and secret key that you copy into the plugin settings screen on your site. In the Enable ReCAPTCHA section, select Comment Form and click the Save Changes button.
Users must first check the I’m not a robot checkbox when they try to add a comment. Finally, you have one of the top solutions to solve WordPress spam problems.
And about you? What plugin do you use to spot these comments? Feel free to use the comments section below if you have questions or want to share your experience and help others!
