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Please leave a comment to test the new plugin.
If you are unable to leave a comment, please Tweet @GrowMap or use this contact info or leave a comment in the latest GrowMap blog post.
As soon as we know it plays nicely with other plugins and hasn’t caused any technical problems we will have others test it and then make it publicly available.
Most bloggers who use WordPress have generally used the Akismet anti-spam plugin since we started. Unfortunately, Akismet flags regular commentators as spammers so often that we have disabled it in all of our blogs.
That has led to being inundated with spam that is now hitting 1,000+ a day in GrowMap and hundreds a day in some of our other blogs. As soon as you manage to get any kind of visibility for a blog you WILL end up with vastly more spam.
Phil Hollows, the brains behind the Feedburner alternative FeedBlitz had a sharp idea for a way to blog spam bots and Andy Bailey from CommentLuv jumped in and wrote a new anti-spam plugin. Having tested the Bad Behavior plugin which behaved extremely badly – locking us all out of GrowMap
Just removing it was not enough – it had to be deleted via ftp and then many files manually edited. Thank goodness for WordPress experts Sammy Russo of Search Friendly Web Design who fixed it (Sammy installed GrowMap).
Special thanks to these others who offered their expertise: – they are people worth knowing:
- Blogging Expert who continually gives of his experience @BloggingJunkie
- Donna Fontenot aka DazzlinDonna who teachs how to make money blogging and offers eBusiness coaching.
- Derek Semmler who installed this and our other JV blogs. Any time you need WordPress consulting consider Derek.
Recovery was difficult enough that I realized we should NOT be testing new plugins in active blogs. They should first be tested in development test sites, then on blogs that are new like this one, and only then in your primary blog.
Please comment here and let us know so that we can ensure this plugin works and make it available to others. It is time we quit losing so much time to spammers.
If you are unable to leave a comment, please Tweet @GrowMap or use this contact info or leave a comment in the latest GrowMap blog post.
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{ 64 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: GrowMap
September 9, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Testing new plugin. If you forget to check the box to “Confirm you are NOT a spammer” you will see this message:
“You forgot to click the checkbox to say you are not a spammer. Either that or you have disabled javascript. Please enable javascript before leaving a comment and make sure you check the checkbox that you are not a spammer, you can press the back button on your browser and your comment text should still be there.”
And should be able to click back and your comment should still be there with any luck. My comment was still there when I tested that in this blog.
Gail recently posted..Why I Recommend BloggerLuv- CommentLuv- SBC
Twitter: commentluv
September 9, 2010 at 1:03 pm
ok so not clicking the confirmation checkbox shows the correct message.
Submitting this as a regular comment..
Andy Bailey recently posted..Guest posting and commentluv search engine updated
Twitter: phollows
September 9, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Testing using FF.
Twitter: phollows
September 9, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Works on FF; incorrectly reports as a spammer 100% of the time when using IE.
Twitter: commentluv
September 9, 2010 at 1:48 pm
checking this on IE8
Andy Bailey recently posted..Guest posting and commentluv search engine updated
Twitter: DonnaFontenot
September 9, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Ok, testing this from Chrome on Linux.
1. Not checking the box does indeed show the message, and clicking the Back button does indeed keep my comment intact. Yay.
2. Now the test of checking the box and while I’m at it, lemme throw in a couple of good spammy words like “make money online” and “lose weight fast” just for good measure. And just for fun, how about a url too – http://www.google.com
3. And a final test with HTML – google
DazzlinDonna recently posted..Funny Tweets About Google Instant
Twitter: GrowMap
September 9, 2010 at 1:46 pm
LOL – you are a great tester and a good thing too since I’m still under the weather and my brain is somewhat foggy today.
Following your lead I’ll use keywords in the name field that many plugins block (business and marketing are both blacklisted by many including WP-SpamFree and I’ll throw a couple links in just for good measure too:
Donna’s eBusiness Consultant interview on Murray Newlands: http://www.murraynewlands.com/2010/08/ebusiness-coach/
Why bloggers benefit from collaborating with bloggers like Donna, the people mentioned in this post and me:
http://www.growmap.com/bloggerluv/
This comment is testing using the Epiphany browser. Forgetting to check the box allowed me to see the message, back up, and check it without losing this comment.
Gail recently posted..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Twitter: laforge
September 9, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Let’s have a little fun!! I will be throwing in some common Keyword Phrases:
Buy V**gra
Buy Ce***rax
What men think women wish was larger
The thing that is a poor substitue for love
and My favorite
“Check out my free s*x site!!”
See if that works!!
Paul Sylvester recently posted..Choosing Between Ipad And Iphone 4
Ok fired up the machine that has IE on it and testing it with that. Here goes …
Donna recently posted..DreamSunset HTML5 and CSS3 Template
Twitter: GrowMap
September 9, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Thanks for going the extra mile, Donna. The sooner we know that it will work the faster we can test it in the blogs that are being slammed with spam.
Gail recently posted..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
Twitter: robsellen
September 9, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hey Gail, just a test comment from me too, using chrome.
I don’t have any pills to market to you for business.
A few words there to go with it.
rob sellen recently posted..No hope for spammers
Twitter: GrowMap
September 9, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Thank you Rob for taking the time to test for us. I really hope this plugin works and will provide it to anyone who wants it.
Gail recently posted..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Twitter: robsellen
September 9, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Welcome, one thing, the subscribe to comments email from this thread went to my gmail spam folder… almost missed this.
rob sellen recently posted..Email marketing- done right it’s a goldmine
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Hi Rob,
I don’t know that I can do anything about that from my end. If I can tell me what.
Twitter: robsellen
September 9, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Probably not alot you can do about it, but maybe an idea would be to have a small blurb next to the tick box, asking readers to “add email address to contacts” and have whatever email it is there.
rob sellen recently posted..Portland Bill- yesterday
Twitter: laforge
September 9, 2010 at 2:36 pm
It looks like the other message didn’t get through. So the Keywords I used were marked as spam. Oh well That at least proves that it is looking for keywords. It is working fine on FF for sure!!
Paul Sylvester recently posted..Ebook Reader Comparison Review – Kindle- Sony Reader- Barnes Noble Nook And Irex Digital Reader
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Very interesting Paul. The new plugin only keeps out bots because (until they get smarter) they don’t generally have the ability to check boxes.
The other comment did go to spam so the question is what put it there. Akismet is disabled in this blog so that only leaves WordPress or the manually entered blacklist in WordPress. I confirmed that nothing in the blacklist would have blocked that comment (because we don’t have much in there yet for this blog).
It appears that WordPress put that comment into the spam folder even though Akismet is not active in this blog and we did not ask WordPress to do that. THIS is an example of what I’ve been trying to tell others about WordPress.
I had one regular reader upset because his comments never went live immediately. There is nothing we can do about that because it is WordPress itself that is putting those comments into spam – not Akismet, not a plugin, not a blacklist – and we can not control that behavior.
Unless we can get a plugin written that whitelists regular commentators OR block so much spam that not much is going into the spam folder we are going to have to keep reviewing all that junk if we want to preserve the ability of our readers to comment in our blogs.
The blacklist feature of WordPress is bad because it doesn’t prevent the spam from showing up – it just dumps it into the spam section which needs to be reviewed because of the behavior we just proved with your test comment.
What I am trying to accomplish is to NOT have to go through all the known spam to dig out the real comments that are being dumped into spam when they aren’t.
We wouldn’t care if WordPress ONLY flagged comments like your test comment that are spam because of the words they include (which is why I don’t approve that comment manually) but it also catches valid comments.
It looks like we may have to have two plugins. This one we’re testing to block bots and another that allows us to blacklist spammers so that their comments go to another SEPARATE section and whitelist regular commentators so their comments go to a REVIEW section.
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Actually Gail, we still had Akismet enabled here as the previous test that we were running on this blog was to determine if the standard Akismet plugin was blocking people or not.
I’ve just disabled Akismet now to eliminate that from the equation now that we have the new plugin installed and active.
For the record, this comment is being made on IE8.
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 4:41 am
Oh, you’re right! I am too tired. Phil thinks that the Google toolbar is why the plugin thinks he is a bot when he is using IE8. Assuming that he and Andy are working on a fix or workaround for that. A larger concern will be what Justin from DragonBlogger said about spammers defeating a similar solution he used in about two weeks. Randomizing might be a solution.
Gail recently posted..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Twitter: jsinkeywest
September 9, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Comment Test
whats up people
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Thanks John. Glad to see your comment worked. We have identified one browser for one person that is getting blocked. I hope that isn’t a show-stopper for this plugin.
Twitter: laforge
September 9, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Although I like the fact that you have to confirm you are not a spammer. Some suggestions to make it harder for any bot to adapt to this are:
randomize the placement like before or after right or left
randomize the checkbox for example:
“Confirm YOU are a spammer” or
“Confirm you are NOT a bot” or
“Confirm you are a REAL Person” or
“Confirm you are NOT a REAL person”
Since we know the spam writers will sooner or later figure out this little technique, randomizing will make it far harder for a spammer to get past that little scenario!! Just saying, not trying to cause problems with the plugin!!
Paul Sylvester recently posted..Choosing Between Ipad And Iphone 4
Twitter: commentluv
September 10, 2010 at 2:12 am
I agree Paul, that is one idea I have for it if it turns out to be useful plugin and something worth fleshing out with more features. There could be a lot more checks that the plugin could make like the time it takes to submit the comment after getting on the page or how many words make up the comment etc.. would love to hear more ideas
Andy Bailey recently posted..Guest posting and commentluv search engine updated
Twitter: phollows
September 10, 2010 at 6:35 pm
There are many places we can go with heuristics and other approaches, such as dwell times, IP frequency, referrers, user agents, reverse DNS, geolocation, plus adding white / black lsts as self-hosted user-manageable entities. I think user customization (e.g. for other languages) of the text etc would be useful.
However, as a pure anti-spam technplogy, I think that as-is GASP is going to stop the bots, and what we don’t know is how many are going to get through right now. There may not be any value – or any need – in putting in more work at this stage into the anti-spam side.
We need to see how well it does in the wild on more heavily abused sites before going further, IMHO. Then we can figure out future development and marketing strategies.
Twitter: commentluv
September 11, 2010 at 3:41 am
mmmm heuristics , love that word.
I agree, no need to overfill the boat before it’s even set sail. What we need to do is concentrate on defeating the bots first and see if that works.
v0.3 has the ability for the blog owner to change the text used on the check box and I updated the settings page so everything is internationalized and ready for a .pot file and also, the tables were tidied up to look neater.
I’ve also added some minor stuff that allows for easy updating of the settings if the plugin is upgraded to a new version and changed the text input to a hidden value so google toolbar doesn’t try to fill it in.
One thing that might be useful is to track how many comments get rejected and for what reason.
feel free to add more suggestions for new things, I’ll add them as we go along.
Andy Bailey recently posted..Guest posting and commentluv search engine updated
Twitter: phollows
September 11, 2010 at 7:42 am
I like the reporting idea – can use it to populate local black / white lists.
An easy feature to add is a referrer check (depending on how we do now); bots typically show up without a referer header. People typically come via a link and so have one.
Twitter: phollows
September 9, 2010 at 5:42 pm
testing w.Google Toolbar on IE
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Did it work?
Twitter: dragonblogger
September 9, 2010 at 6:12 pm
This is why I use Akismet combined with WP-SpamFree as my only comment spam blockers.
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Hi Justin,
Have you read any of my posts about Akismet deleting comments bloggers never even see or the many bloggers we know who are regular readers of our blogs who wish to comment having their comments either deleted or immediately thrown into spam?
WP-SpamFree blocks words like marketing and sales and businesses. Is it really your intention to keep businesses from interacting with your blog?
Believe me when I say that I know what a pain spam is. I get 1000 a day in GrowMap, hundreds in several others and dozens in the rest of the twelve blogs I am managing – knowing full well that the more successful I can grow them the worse spam will get!
But I am still unwilling to allow a third party to censor my best commentators based on them being flagged as spammers by bloggers who don’t know real comments from spam.
Twitter: dragonblogger
September 9, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I get tons of bloggers that use the work marketing…etc in my comments, and some show up in my SPAM bucket, and I do weed through and approve.
My regulars email me when a comment gets flagged, and I rarely get one or two emails a month or two that a valid comment was blocked. An extra check box is a very temporary measure, once the bots “read” the input field, they will automatically populate it as checked and bypass. You will see, I did this same method to one of my classified sites and it was thwarted in 2 weeks.
I know comments are important for interactivity and have some SEO value, but I have also seen people stress too much on comments and have seen plenty of blogs and sites tremendously successful in terms of traffic and revenue stream that have comments completely disabled across the board. (in this case it is informational or product sales stuff of course, not true blogging which encourages interaction).
You say blog businesses from leaving comments, but in reality most businesses don’t comment on sites or hire mass comment bots to leave comments for them. I have several CEO’s for companies who comment on my site and they never have issues with the KeyWordLuv links to their site.
(I would assume people who really wanted to leave a comment, check to see if comment exists and would contact me if it doesn’t).
Justin Germino recently posted..Creating Twitter Contests with Tweetons
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Hi Justin,
While most businesses have not been commenting, more of them will realize the importance of interacting over time. I agree that comments are not a requirement to succeed as a blogger. I do feel it is important for some bloggers such as myself to ensure that new bloggers and businesses not familiar with the challenges of commenting and spam to be able to reach us.
Would you mind sharing how you handle spam comments. Do you only pull them out if the commentator knows enough to contact you using another method or do you weed through all the spam regularly? While I once did that it is becoming more and more difficult as the volume increases.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the person leaving a comment was made aware of what is going on. When Akismet intervenes they either see a blank white page or the page refreshes and they don’t know whether the comment got deleted or is being held for moderation. (When it doesn’t intervene we normally get a message indicating our comment is pending approval.)
Each of us decides what our priorities are. I agree that for many it is not what is best for others and for some of us it is.
Thank you for the heads up on how likely bots are to figure out how to get past the plugin. Phil and Andy are both brilliant so we can hope that they find a way to randomize it in such a way that we can keep the bots out.
Whether that works or not I would still like to see a way to whitelist and blacklist commentators as I wrote about when I blogged about WordPress Whitelist Blacklist Plugin.
Twitter: yndblog
September 9, 2010 at 7:07 pm
testing testing 1 2 3
is this on
anybody here
what’s a girl gotta do to get a drink in this place?
there once was a man from Nantucket
Karen Cruz recently posted..Letter of Resignation
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Thank you for testing Karen. The more the merrier.
Twitter: findingthehumor
September 9, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Can’t wait to hear the results of this test.
Melinda recently posted..Sticker Mania
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 9, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Thank you Melinda. So far we have to correct one issue when using IE8 with the Google Toolbar and it sounds like we need to randomize somehow to keep bots from defeating the plugin. I am so tired of spammers. Life would be so much better if there weren’t so many selfish folks and those who aren’t would get a clue.
Twitter: lavenderuses
September 9, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Hi Gail
Hope this works for you. I can’t imagine getting so much spam. You get more spam than I get visitors to my site. Soon as I am completely recovered I am happy to start sorting for you. I have found this blogging community so encouraging to me with my new blog I would love to give something back.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia recently posted..Lavender Health-Lavender in treatment for hair loss
Twitter: PetLvr
September 10, 2010 at 2:46 am
Testing ….
I can confirm I am not a spammer !
call HART crazy recently posted..STREET DANCE – AMAZING!!! & FUNNY!!! MUST SEE!!! Humans are the Mastorpiece of GOD
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Hi Hart,
Thanks for assisting with our test. We really appreciate it.
Gail recently posted..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
Twitter: bloggingjunkie
September 10, 2010 at 8:42 am
Let’s see what’s the result of this new plugin. We are observing that Akismat is creating false positive.
Imran Yousaf recently posted..Survival Strategy in First Six Months of Blogging
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Thanks for assisting Imran. Yours was the last comment left under v2; there was an issue with IE8 using Google Toolbar being seen as a bot. V3 is now installed.
Gail recently posted..Building Traffic Using Anchor Text
Twitter: phollows
September 10, 2010 at 6:22 pm
It works!
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 7:41 pm
YEAH!
Twitter: phollows
September 10, 2010 at 6:24 pm
So, want to try this on a site that was getting hit up by spammers? Andy’s latest fix addresses my issue completely. Time to get it a little more real-world exposure.
Thoughts?
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Hi Phil,
I just IMed Derek to see if he is available to install it on any of our other blogs. I’ll let you know which one(s) as soon as I know.
Gail Gardner recently posted..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Twitter: GrowMap
September 10, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Testing again in FireFox. Did not lose the comment when I forgot to check the box.
Gail recently posted..Google Instant Faster Than Bob Dylan
Twitter: phollows
September 11, 2010 at 7:38 am
FF test 2 – not a spammer button checked. This one should appear. Prior test with FF 3.5.11 win 7 x64 and box unchecked was fine; comment blocked.
Twitter: GrowMap
September 11, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Hi Phil,
Comment blocked? We’re also testing on GrowMap now.
Gail recently posted..Help Us Test Gasp Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin
Twitter: GrowMap
September 11, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I upped that setting to 150 to see if that will cause it to save my comment. If this works that can NOT be 150 MB.
This is just too bizarre. I lost the comment above on GrowMap if I don’t check the box but I don’t lose the same comment here with all the same data in it and exactly the same comment.
I also don’t lose it when I do exactly the same comment from the same PC using the Epiphany browser.
Twitter: kaiserthesage
September 12, 2010 at 1:14 am
mic test 1,2,3…
Thanks Rob, for dragging me here
@Gail. I’ll be glad to share this all throughout the community once it’s live! I’ll definitely make a post regarding this as well
Regards,
Jason Acidre
Jason recently posted..SEO For Hire – First 5 To Comment Gets Free Consultation
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 24, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Hi Jason,
I’m still waiting to get the ftp access info from Derek. As soon as I get it Imran can install the plugin here and in our other newer blog first and if all goes well we’ll get it on all the blogs.
When it is thoroughly tested we’ll have all our blogging friends help spread the good news about it.
Twitter: GrowMap
September 12, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Testing to see if fields stay filled in when you forget to check the box using the Chromium browser. It does.
The problem only occurs on GrowMap.com using FireFox or Chromium. Even Firefox works fine in this blog.
Gail recently posted..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
This is nice information about new testing spammer. This contains really informative and helpful. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
Twitter: sonlinebiz
September 21, 2010 at 2:54 am
Looking forward to the final launch of this plug-in
. Wish I had another wordpress site where I could test it on without worrying my head too much about the consequences of deactivating Akismet and Conditional CAPTCHA.
Here goes anyway. Let’s see if my comment gets through. I’ll be adding this to my weekly post roundup and hopefully garner more testers/commentators
Udegbunam Chukwudi recently posted..Top Three Ways Of Building A Mailing List For FREE!
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 24, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Hi Chuks,
We have the new version but Derek has been so busy I haven’t been able to get it installed. Imran is willing to install it here to test it and in another new blog but I don’t know the ftp access info – have to get that from Derek.
I have sent the new version to a couple others to install in new blogs and hope we can get it thoroughly tested and out to anyone who wants it very soon.
Twitter: GrowMap
September 29, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Testing latest version .4 of anti-spam plugin that should resolve the issue of losing the comment or other fields if you forget to click the “Confirm you are NOT a spammer” button.
Twitter: robsellen
September 29, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Hey Gail… any ideas on when this will be roughly ready?
rob sellen recently posted..Wall worthy pictures coming soon!
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 29, 2010 at 3:37 pm
How about right now? We can’t guarantee no one will have any issues installing it because every blog has a different mix of theme and plugins but we haven’t run into any problems yet.
Twitter: robsellen
September 29, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Where do i get that then… happy to see how it goes.
rob sellen recently posted..Wall worthy pictures coming soon!
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 30, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Hi Rob,
I emailed it to you to the address you use when commenting.
Gail
Twitter: robsellen
September 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Thanks Gail, just got it… will let you know what happens, if any problems ect. ;o)
rob sellen recently posted..No hope for spammers
Twitter: kikolani
September 29, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Testing the latest version of the commenting plugin. Going to find out what happens when you don’t check the box.
Found out.
Kristi recently posted..Popup Domination Review and User Guide
Twitter: dereksemmler
September 29, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Cool fix, isn’t it. We have Donna Fontenot to thank for that!
love those email spam comments that have a bunch of letters .. but the real puzzle, the ones that start off like they read the post, then, bam, viagra, or whatever