January 9, 2014

Reducing Spam on WordPress

WordPress is an amazing platform. It is free to use, straightforward to setup and extremely flexible. It can be an Online Shop, a Web Publisher, a Business Directory, even a Social Network. However because it is so widely used it is a target for unscrupulous people and in this instance spammers. As a user you can be subjected to a *huge* amount of spam in the form of comments on your posts.
 
To reduce comment spam (because you'll probably never eradicate it permanently) a good option is to install a plugin that requires membership of a Social Network like Facebook before they can post anything, instead of relying on WordPress own comments system or forcing people to join your site which could open you up for further abuse.
 
First thing to do is install a Facebook comments plug in (like the one by Alex Moss called 'Facebook Comments' as it is particularly easy to use).
 
Next, you will need to create a quick app on Facebook (details can be found here) and configure it to work with your site.
 
When that is done and tested, login to your site and go to Settings > Discussion, and disallow people to comment on new posts and close commenting on older posts after 1 day. This now forces people to be logged into Facebook and stops people posting junk.
 
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