I’ve been dealing with an increasing amount of comment spam since mid last week and I decided to do something proactive about it.  I’ve installed a new spam filter plugin called Simple Spam Filter for WordPress by tan tan noodles.  It leverages both Akismet and reCAPTCHA technologies but in a slightly non-traditional way which I prefer.

When a user submits a blog post comment, they are not automatically required to decode a reCAPTCHA banner image.

If their comment passes the Akismet filter and it passes filters integrated in the Simple Spam Filter, the comment will be posted as is.

If the comment fails either of the previously mentioned filter checks, then the comment submission will be challenged by a reCAPTCHA banner image.  If the reCAPTCHA banner image is decoded successfully, the comment will post.  If the reCAPTHA banner image is not decoded successfully, the comment is immediately rejected and discarded (it won’t wait for me in a spam queue for approval).

Since I haven’t used it before, I can’t guarantee this plugin is 100% bug free. If you are having any issues submitting comments, please let me know via email so I can look into it.  The last thing I want to do is hinder meaningful discussions or the functionality of this blog.

I also installed the Subscribe To Comments and WP-Mail-SMTP plugins earlier this evening which allow readers to subscribe to new comments as well as manage their existing comment subscriptions.  Notification is delivered via Email (hence the need for the Mail plugin).  I’d like to thank and recognize Rich Brambley over at vmetc.com for leading me to the comment subscription plugin.

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