February 16, 2010 Are WPMU or BuddyPress splogs driving you crazy? Is your site on the verge of being virtually crippled by dozens of splog registrations per day? Step into our office, please. You suffer from a common dilemma: How can I keep my registration open for real users and increase membership but put a lock on the door to keep out the pernicious bots? At WPMU.org we are always on the lookout for ways to help our users combat splogs. I’d like to share a couple recent findings that will undoubtedly assist you in protecting your site from spam. Splogs can quickly overflow your blog and member directories with fake users, turning your site into spam central and generally making it look like crap. This is an issue every WPMU or BuddyPress site owner must have a handle on or suffer the consequences. Here are some early 2010 recommendations:
Anti-Splog Plugin: Detect, Prevent, Moderate, and Destroy
This plugin is at the moment the most sure-fire way to keep your site free of splogs. Its unparalleled success with Edublogs is already well-proven with more than 20,000 splogs killed in a matter of two months. It targets bots as well as human sploggers with amazing accuracy and is constantly learning and adapting, based on data it collects from thousands of blogs. Anti-Splog will not disappoint as so many other plugins do. The huge advantage of this plugin is that it will work right away without wasting hours of your time. You will not need to try multiple plugins and .htaccess hacks in combination to try to stumble upon the right formula for killing splogs. It simply works. Check out more of the details on the Anti-Splog plugin and start saving yourself time today.
Super Captcha: Custom Bot Verification
Originally written for WPMU, the Super Captcha plugin now works with BuddyPress and WordPress single user as well. Its protection capabilities cannot rival the Anti-Splog plugin but it may provide your site with some temporary relief and with the right combination of techniques, you may find yourself splog-free for a season. If you don’t mind captchas this may be a solution for you. Anti-bot verification is placed automagically on the login page, and the registration pages. You can control when and where the captchas are displayed, as well as dictate your own custom word list that is easier to read. Failed logins are shown in your dashboard so that you can spam the accounts as soon as they attempt. One reason I chose to include this plugin among the newest remedies for splogs is because it was recently updated within the last month and is robust enough to work with social networking variations of WordPress as well as simple single user installations.
4 Steps to Stop Sploggers: A Fatal Concoction
An article over at BP-Tricks.com, written by stwc, outlines a combination of anti-splog methods that may prove to be successful for your installation when working in combination together.
There are four basic steps to his comprehensive solution:
- Change the text on the http://yourbuddypresssite.com/register page.
- Remove the “powered by” text in footer.php of your child theme.
- Change the register slug in wp-config.php
- Add a functions.php file in your custom childtheme to redirect signups for all blogs on your WordPress MU install to the Buddypress register page.
Check out the full article for more detailed instructions. Though this hasn’t worked for everyone, it may be something that will work for you.
If you want to share any additional anti-splog remedies that you’ve found to be extremely useful so far this year, let us know in the comments or contact us on Twitter: @wpmuorg
Sarah Gooding on Google+
I’ve been using antisplog for about 2 weeks and my install @ http://bizomundo.com is getting boring. No more 20 to 30 minutes every morning sorting out the sploggers… Very Nice JOB!!!!
For my money, the best way to reduce/eliminated splogs is to charge admission. =D
@Griffin I like that. ;)
Great article. There