For anyone who is blogging, SPAM is an ever-present problem……..until now!

I’ve been blogging for awhile now, and like so many other bloggers, I’ve been using Akismet to block all comment spam, and it did a great job…….a great job of blocking it from going in to Pending comments, but my Spam comments was growing by leaps and bounds. All these comments still had to be waded through to see if there were any real comments in there that shouldn’t have been. Needless to say, this can be a little on the time consuming side.

Recently, while reading another article somewhere I came across a SPAM plugin I hadn’t heard of yet, the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin, also known as GASP.

GASP adds a checkbox below the comment area that anyone wishing to comment must check to verify that they are not a spammer. A checkbox is much simpler to use than a CAPTCHA, so it doesn’t deter people from commenting like a CAPTCHA might. This checkbox is generated via a client side javascript that bots cannot see, and it will stop about 99% of all automated spam bots.

The plugin will verify that the checkbox has been checked before the comment is submitted so there’s no chance that a comment will be lost if it’s being submitted by legitimate human user.

My first thought when I installed this plugin was “Yeah, right”. I was skeptical, but not any more. It really does work and my spam comments have gone from in the hundreds every week to about 2.

Once you’ve installed this plugin, you can configure it through the Settings menu.

On the settings page you can change the labels that the visitor will see when leaving a comment.

At the bottom of the page you can enter how many URLs you will allow in a comment. This is helpful with discouraging those who are only commenting for links, and not adding any value to your post.

This plugin works so well, that I have deactivated and deleted Akismet as it is no longer necessary.

If you’re using this plugin and you like it, please comment below. If you know of something even better, please share with all of us!