How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam using Built-In Features
How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam using Built-In Features. In this post, I explain different ways to stop the WordPress comment spam using built-In features.
Comment spam is a fact of life on the internet. Once you launch your WordPress site on the internet, you should equip yourself to handle spammers.
Overall, spam comments can leave a poor experience for your visitors. You must stop your website’s comment spam from delivering a quality user experience.
But how can you do that?
But before that, let’s understand why spammers attack your WordPress website.
Let’s start with How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam using Built-In Features.
Why Comment Spam Bots Target Your Site?
Above all, spammers use automated bots to leave a comment on your WordPress site to channel your traffic towards their fishy links. Multiple networks called “botnets” and forums are on the internet where hackers can hire a bot for spam comments.
In fact, if you consider email spam, 80% of all spam is sent by just ten botnets! Here’s why spammers use these comments spam bots:
1. To piggyback a link
Basically, spamming comments is a Black Hat SEO technique to build backlinks for a website. Many unsolicited or low quality sites use bots to leave spam comments with links to attract SEO points.
Once your visitors click on the links, they channel towards the low quality site, which increases its new visitor number.
2. To overload your server
As a matter of fact, hackers use bots to overload your server and cause it to crash. Then, they send bots to attack your login page and overload your server with spam requests.
The requests can be in the form of comments. As a result, whilst trying to get your site back up, spammers or hackers discreetly use different methods to hack your site.
3. To pivot your traffic to unsolicited sites
As seen, websites that induce viruses or sell drugs use spam comments to get more traffic. Visitors can click the link in the comments and land on these unsolicited websites.
As a result, the websites can inject malicious viruses into the visitor’s sites and increase the risk of damage. Also, spammers are constantly evolving and changing their approach to trying to leave a comment on your website.
But you should follow different anti spam measures WordPress provides to lay a solid defensive shield.
Here are the top ways to stop spam comments with built in features.
Top Ways You Can Use To Stop WordPress Comment Spam
You can follow multiple ways to control the spam comments, but we have filtered the best ways using WordPress.
1. Limit the links allowed on a post
Most spammers use comments to inject links into your comment section and trick people into clicking on them.
Therefore, a significant way to combat spam is to permit lesser links in your comments. It may restrict legitimate visitors from posting many links, but slowing down the spammers can be worth the inconvenience.
Please go to Settings => Discussion from your WordPress dashboard to make the change.
Certainly, you set how many links you will permit in a comment before the system flags for moderation. Also, you can minimize the number to zero if you want to require moderation for comments with links.
2. Create a blacklist
Many spam comments contain recognizable keywords. Consequently, it makes it simpler to spot them and stop them from appearing on your WordPress website.
You can create a ‘blacklist’ including words you don’t want appearing on your site. And your site will flag comments containing one of them. Also, if you don’t want your competitors’ products or website links or mentions, you could include those.
In order to create a list of blacklisted words, click on Settings => Discussion and spot the Comment Blacklist section.
Here, you can enter the list of words. When someone posts a comment containing one of those words, it will be sent to the trash. It’s vital to choose the words in your blacklist thoughtfully so you don’t delete comments by legitimate users.
3. Restrict comment privileges
Most spammers post on as many pages and sites as possible. They move on to the next site if you make it challenging to include their comments.
As well as, you can restrict them by limiting comment privileges to your website’s registered users. It puts an extra hurdle between spammers and your website’s comment section.
As a benefit, it also encourages users to sign up for an account or a membership. You can choose the option in the Settings => Discussion section in WordPress. You’ll find it under Other comment settings.
Check the Users logged in to the comment box, and save your changes.
4. Disable Comments Entirely
Apart from being selective with a post, you can simply disable WordPress comments altogether. Equally, it helps you protect your website from spam comments and remove the comment options if it doesn’t require comments.
Disable comments by simply unchecking the Allow people to post comments option located under Settings => Discussion.
Following, to restrict comments entirely, go to the Default post settings at the top of the Discussion settings screen, and uncheck. It will turn off comments on all new posts.
But it doesn’t disable comments for posts you have already published. By all means, to turn off the comments for the published posts, you need to select each post individually.
Once you uncheck the option, scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the Save Changes button. WordPress will restrict commenting.
5. Disable comments for individual posts
Further, you can disable comments after publishing your posts by setting up the post editing screen for the relevant post. By the time, it helps you prevent comments on specific posts and ensure your WordPress site is free from spam.
Disabling comments is useful if you’re publishing a post on a controversial subject. Or a post that has attracted a lot of spam.
Simplify, go to Posts, spot the post you want to edit, and open the post editing screen.
Scroll down to the Discussion tab and click to open it. Uncheck Allow comments to disable comments on the specific post completely.
Save the comment changes by clicking the Update button, and the users won’t view or publish comments on the post.
6. Set up a comment moderation system
In a nutshell, comment moderation means when you want to approve comments by someone before they appear on your site. It can be an excellent strategy if you have spare time and resources.
In WordPress, you can allow a comment moderation system easily. Go back to Settings => Discussion, and mark the Before a comment appears section.
Once you select Comments must be manually approved, comments on your site will be kept Pending until you review them.
Generally, you can check each comment and decide whether to let it through or trash it. Also, check WordPress Codex for more advice on setting up a comment moderation system.
7. Turn off anonymous comments
Indeed, you can also turn off anonymous comments to minimize the spam comments on your website. WordPress native comments ask the users for four pieces of information: comment, email, name, and website by default.
Instead, if you enable anonymous comments, the visitors don’t need to provide the details. It allows many spam bots that crawl comment forms on websites and degrade the user experience.
Disable anonymous comments by simply checking the Comment author must fill out the name and email option.
Spot the option under Settings > Discussion. It will make it harder for spambots to leave automated comments.
Also, it might discourage people from publishing malicious comments or trolling your site.
8. Remove spam comments with a plugin
Apart from the effective ways listed above, WordPress enables you to handle spam comments with the help of a plugin.
Installing anti spam plugins is the most powerful way to stop WordPress comment spam. It means you can keep your site’s comments enabled and prevent spam comments from being published.
Different plugins offer different features and benefits. Here are the top anti spam plugins to stop WordPress comment spam.
Akismet
The anti spam plugin connects to an updated spam database to recognize which comments are trouble and filter them out. It also enables the users to see the flagged comments.
Akismet plugin is available by default with every WordPress installation. The plugin provides real time protection to your WordPress site from spam.
Although the plugin should be on your site as it’s pre installed, if you remove it, you can reinstall it.
You can download the Akismet anti spam plugin from the WordPress repository. Or perform a simple search within your WordPress dashboard under Plugins => Add New.
The plugin has effective spam rules and filters, ensuring you view the good comments, not the bad ones.
Antispam Bee
The anti spam plugin blocks spam comments and trackbacks effectively. It doesn’t send your personal information to third party services and is free of cost, ad free, and 100% GDPR compliant.
Antispam Bee has over 500,000 active installs and offers multiple customization options to protect your website from spam comments.
Disable Comments
Disable Comment is a powerful free plugin that enables you globally disable comments for a post type. It’s effective if you want to disable comments on a site with existing content and want to avoid manual processes.
A few of the listed effective ways can help prevent spammers from flooding your comment field.
Thank you for reading How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam using Built-In Features. We should conclude.
Stop Spam with Security SAML Plugin WP CLOUD SSO
How to Stop WordPress Comment Spam using Built-In Features Conclusion
Summarizing, spam comments quickly clutter your site, make it unprofessional, and deliver a poor customer experience.
Please ensure your website remains clean and free from spam comments. In turn, it increases your customer retention and improve the site’s user experience.
Develop a strong anti spam strategy and take different precautionary steps for better results.
To check out more WordPress content please click here.
