Perishable Press

Approximately 30 days ago, I completely uninstalled the Bad Behavior plugin from Perishable Press. As you may recall, many Bad Behavior users were unexpectedly locked out of their own sites and forced to either uninstall or upgrade in order to fix the problem. Of course, in my perpetual battle to optimize and streamline everything, I decided to drop Bad Behavior from the otherwise obligatory WordPress anti-spam trinity.

30 days later..

I am happy to report that Perishable Press has not seen a noticeable increase in comment spam since the removal of the Bad Behavior plugin. Of course, during the past month, two or three trackback spam turds managed to slide through, however, even Bad Behavior failed to stop everything. This is great news because I prefer to avoid unnecessary plugins whenever possible — especially those of the resource-intensive variety.

My current lineup..

With Bad Behavior out of the picture, my current anti-spam strategy looks like this:

• Akismet — although I consider Akismet my primary defense against comment spam, I have noticed a serious drop in the overall number of spam comments reported in its admin options panel. We’re talking like maybe 1 or 2 stopped comments per day at the most. This is strange, because, as previously mentioned, my site has been relatively spam-free for quite some time. Hmmm..
• WordPress’ built-in comment-spam blacklist — this is perhaps the most underrated anti-spam tool available for WordPress today: it’s easy, it’s free, it’s fast, and it’s very effective. Best of all, instead of getting deleted, blocked comments are moved to the “Moderation” queue for closer inspection, thereby preventing the loss of any false positives.
• Blocking of all no-referrer requests — this is another effective anti-spam trick that stops many automated spammers dead at the door. See the linked article for more details on this effective strategy.
• The Ultimate htaccess Blacklist — Last but certainly not least, I enjoy the automated blacklisting of unwanted cyberscum — not just for spammers anymore! — provided by the ultimate htaccess blacklist. See the linked article for more details on this powerful tool.

Bye bye Bad Behavior..

Moral of the story? Along with a few htaccess tricks in place and a strong WordPress blacklist, Akismet may be all you need for complete protection against comment spam. Best of all, with Bad Behavior out of the picture, Perishable Press enjoys faster pages, cleaner code, and a leaner, meaner database than ever before — definitely sweet, if you ask me.