• 0

[Wordpress] Defensio: An Akismet Alternative


Question

I have a small personal blog. It's nothing big, usually averaging between 17,000 to 25,000 hits a month. However, it's become a HUGE spam target because of a few articles I've posted that have decent page rankings on Google. Since it's inception, I've been using Akismet with satisfactory results. In about a year's time, it had stopped over 60,000 spam comments and trackbacks. However, recently, I've been getting more and more spam slipping through Akismet and I was getting tired of having to manually identify comments as spam.

About a month ago, I remembered seeing an alternative anti-spam plugin, Defensio, getting attention on my Wordpress Dashboard from a few of the developer blogs. I decided to give it a shot a few days ago and, so far, nothing has slipped by, at all.

Defensio is also more configurable, allowing you to take more control over how strict it is. Each comment is given a "Spaminess" rating. Using this system, you can set a cut off point. By default, any comment with a "spaminess" of 80% or higher will be marked as spam and put into quarantine. You can adjust this default percentage, though, so far, I've seen no need to deviate from the 80% default.

I just wanted to give you guys and girls a heads up. If you use Wordpress, give Defensio a try. I've been very pleased with it, so far.

Defensio.com

post-1798-1201812982_thumb.jpg

post-1798-1201812999_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

I was considering going that route, but I really try to keep my active plugin list as minimal as possible to reduce issues when there are major WP updates. I didn't think Defensio would be as good as it is, but I felt like it was worth a try after Akismet continued to let me down. I have to admit, though, Akismet worked beautifully until the past month or so.

Edited by bangbang023
spelling mistake
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in blah/wp-content/plugins/defensio-anti-spam/lib/defensio_counter.php on line 36

Where are you getting that? I'm not getting the error at all, though I don't use the counter function on my main page like some people want to do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Where are you getting that? I'm not getting the error at all, though I don't use the counter function on my main page like some people want to do.

i don't use the counter either, but i guess it imports the file nonetheless.

anyways i figured out the problem, just lousy coding on their part using "<?" instead of "<?php"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
nice, might try it out:)

although I have all my comments set to to appear until approved anyway.

I try to avoid that because I want them to have the satisfaction of seeing it appear immediately, even though I get few comments. Another friend also suggested using a Captcha plugin, instead, but, again, I didn't want to take away from the experience for legitimate guests.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Wait, Wait!

Before you guys go further, I found a better anti-spam plugin. Post it about a week ago here

The idea of the plugin is that it will block all automated script from being inserted to the comments area. It actually cuts my SPAM from 30-50 a day into 0 or maybe 1 or 2!

It will not block "manually entered comments". Check it out and use it with Akismet!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Wait, Wait!

Before you guys go further, I found a better anti-spam plugin. Post it about a week ago here

The idea of the plugin is that it will block all automated script from being inserted to the comments area. It actually cuts my SPAM from 30-50 a day into 0 or maybe 1 or 2!

It will not block "manually entered comments". Check it out and use it with Akismet!

that's an absolutely horrible tool (if it even qualifies as a tool, more like a piece of junk). and the claim that it won't block manually entered content is just wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Best form of spam prevention I found, was to use valid XHTML, for months I never got a single spam comment, when I disabled XHTML for IE users the spam started rolling in (So then I started using Akismet). Anyway, this plugin looks nice.

that's an absolutely horrible tool (if it even qualifies as a tool, more like a piece of junk). and the claim that it won't block manually entered content is just wrong.
In simpler words, it will stop bots from commenting on your posts through some JavaScript and Cookies mumbo jumbo behind the scene (you don?t even need to know!)

Any plugin that tells me it uses "mumbo jumbo" and that I don't need to know how it works gets a thumbs down for me.

And it screws over users who have JS and cookies disabled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
Best form of spam prevention I found, was to use valid XHTML, for months I never got a single spam comment, when I disabled XHTML for IE users the spam started rolling in (So then I started using Akismet). Anyway, this plugin looks nice.

My site is valid xhtml transitional (with the exception of the rare youtube video that I post) and I still get tons of spam.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
My site is valid xhtml transitional (with the exception of the rare youtube video that I post) and I still get tons of spam.

I think he means serve the pages as .xhtml (IE doesnt support .xhtml, i would assume most spam bots dont either) but firefox does, somewhat.

Edited by Colin-uk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
My site is valid xhtml transitional (with the exception of the rare youtube video that I post) and I still get tons of spam.

Mine was valid XHTML 1.1 with the correct mime-type, which causes IE to throw up a download prompt (and stopped pretty much every spam bot that tried to access my site)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.