It is sure that you want to prevent spam posts from happening on your WordPress site. Spam registrations are emerging as a common nuisance for the site owners who are running membership sites or allow multiple users to have registration on their website. In this article, here at Templatetoaster WordPress theme generator, i will discuss on how to keep the nuisance of spam at bay from your WordPress websites.

What is Spam?

Spam can be defined as flooding the blogs with multiple copies of the exact same message, in order to force the message on many people who otherwise would rather choose not to receive it. Most spam is seen as commercial advertising, often intended for doubtful products, fraudulent schemes, or some bizarre quasi-legal services.

Why is Spam Bad?

We all love comments on our blogs! But in an effort to inflate the count of comments on our blog, a lot of us approve illegitimate comments too. So how can this be harmful to you?

Bad links are always on the radar of Google

No, Google is just not punishing the sites that buy links but even the sites that allow them. Now, definitely, you simply would not want to make Google think that you are allowing the bad link, no matter, even in comments!

Spam in comments only reflects the lack of moderation in your blog

Obviously, bad links and spam in comments creates the wrong impression in the minds of your readers. It sends them a clear message that blog is not taken care well.

You are repelling your readers

Okay, so you allowed all comments on your blog, and one of your readers accidently clicked on it. This way you not just diverted the traffic but also made him land to a wrong page unintentionally, which is the least that you would want!

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Ways to Combat Spam:

When there is a problem, there ought to be a solution. So indeed there are ways which you can use to combat spam and safeguard your WordPress website accounts. In the list below the most efficient ways to keep spam at bay:

Get Hold of a Suitable Anti-Spam Plugin:

WordPress undoubtedly is one of the best blogging platforms available on the net. If you run a multi-authored blog, and you are setting your blog registration to the status of open, there are chances, which are pretty high that you will be haunted by the attacks of spammer and BOTS. They will be frequently registering on your blog which indeed is very annoying.
One of the most effective ways to keep your WordPress website safe is by installing a suitable and efficient anti-spam plugin from the plugin directory that is available on the WordPress website. If you are tired of deleting a great number of spam users every day then quickly install an anti-spam plugin if you already have not. Akismet, Stop Spammers are some of the great plugins among many others that keep your account safe from spam attacks.

Modify your .htaccess File:

It is highly recommended that you use multiple layers of security for intensifying your defense against spam attacks. Spammers choose different kinds of technologies to haunt you. So you need to have an array of strong defensive mechanism and also keep yourself updated. One intelligent thing to do so that you are safe will be to modify your .htaccess from the interface. There are many ways which you can use like using Cpanel or WordPress dashboard or through FTP clients.

You can deny spammer IP’s using .htaccess file present in the root directory. There are two ways of doing this:

1. Manually
Manually add the list of spammer IP’s to .htaccess file. Below is the example:

[box]

Order allow,deny
Deny from 117.108.3.3
Allow from all

[/box]

This means IP 117.108.3.3 is denied access to your website

2. Using Plugin

Adding each IP manually may become a Herculean task. You can use a plugin like ‘Brute force login protection‘ instead. The plugin automatically adds spammer IP’s to the .htaccess file.

Moderate Comments:

Comment moderation is another handy tool that is available in the WordPress support codex to fight spam comments. This great feature allows you to stop unnecessary comments from appearing on your WordPress website without your nod or expressed approval. Apart from combating spam, the comment moderation feature is also very much useful in general applications as well. Go to setting> Discussions> Comment moderations. As per your convenience and choice set some specific rules or set the administer mode on for moderation on all comments.

Keep Comments That Have Links on Hold:

As we have discussed earlier, spams are generally done to make unwanted advertisements. So spam comments are supposedly thought to have links to them or you may be assured that they will have. So keep the comments that have links in the hold mode. It will help you in fighting the spamming problem if not totally eliminate it. You can also disable HTML in comments so that your comment with link problem is solved.

No Follow Comment Links:

It is often seen that newbie bloggers use plugins to remove the no follow feature from the comment author links to have more comments on their posts. Making these links do follow highly encourages the spammers to flood your comment box with spams. Remember that quality always suppresses quantity. So it is better not to have any such exposing plugins installed and if you don’t then move on to the next point.

Remove Website URL from Comment Box:

The URL field available in the comment form attracts bots, human spammers and people who do not possess any kind of interest in the discussion or the topic. Remove the URL field from the comment form to discourage silly posts and spams.

Turn Off Trackbacks:

Now this a very simple yet effective method of combating spams. A large chunk of the spam comments occurs due to this trackback feature. This feature is generally not at all needed for many posts. Disable the trackback option for your entire blog or any individual post. Easily do so by going to Settings> Discussion> and then disable the allow notifications from other blogs option and it’s done. For specific posts, you can do this by editing the posts. Check out our free templates.

Turn Off Comments for Old Posts:

Go to Settings> Discussion and simply put a deadline for commenting on your old posts. This is a great safety measure and if you have done all the above said things or even some of them, then try this also. It will definitely stop spamming happening at your older posts.

Conclusion

Take steps very cautiously and constantly update yourself about the different routes that the spammers take to make spam contents. We also believe that applying some of the above-said options will greatly act as a remedy for your spamming trouble at your WordPress website.

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