Many wordpress bloggers test a simple math question for posting comments for spam protection. I recently installed the Math Comment Spam Protection and comment spam for moderation is almost zero, and Akismet spam is down to a minimum.
Math Question for Spam Protection
Akismet is a powerful spam comment blocking tool we use and it blocks over 2000 spam comments daily. But still a few spam comments still managed to slip through. After I installed the math comment spam protection wordpress plugin, spam comments to moderate have gone to zero and Akismet detected spam is also significantly less (from 2000 per day to 100 per day!). Previously I used to simply delete all Akismet spam (impossible to scan 2000 spam looking for the 1 valid comment, a big blogger time wasting habit I fixed), now I can easily scan my spam comments as it is a manageble number.
This has also fixed my missing WordPress Database Backup Emails, due to huge database size following huge Akismet blocked spam. Now smaller number of Akismet blocked comments mean the plugin has a smaller database to back up and works well.
Unless you want to try an illegible and barely visible captcha, the plugin is highly recommended. After the usual installation via FTP and activation via the plugin admin area, you need to paste a strip of code in your comments.php to integrate the math question. The code works well if your comments template is based on the default comments.php file. It worked fine on my template and works great. Try it.
Earlier I was getting spam emails from my contact form. When I installed a new more secure contact form which also used a math question to confirm human user input – the spam emails stopped totally from that day.
These math questions are a simple yet effective tool to identify human input, block automated spam requests and saves you lot of time.
Update: I have stopped using this plugin on this blog since several readers reported that although their total was right, the plugin kept persisting the total was wrong.