Back when this blog was on Blogware, fighting trackback and comment spam was impossible. The filtering scripts were not that good and all around, I just had to moderate by hand, which is no easy task for a popular Web site of any shape or size.

When I moved to my own hosting account with WordPress installed, my battle with spam got a heck of a lot easier.

For me, 99% of my spam and trackback spam is filtered out by the Askimet WordPress plugin. If Askimet doesn’t do it for you, or you need even more protection though – I have a few suggestions.

Spam Karma 2 – This plugin works by running all of your comments and trackbacks through a list of tests, and then grades it by “karma”. It also has a few other spam prevention tools built in as well. If Askimet wasn’t working for me, this would be my number two choice.

Comment Timeout – This neat tool allows you to turn commenting off for older posts. Chances are if they haven’t added a comment in a year, they never will. This will leave less holes for spammers to find to post their “v1agra” loving messages.

Bad Behavior – Bad Behavior is a set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.

One word of caution, don’t go overboard with spam filtering or you are going to piss off your readers. If they have to jump through 20 hoops to post a comment and so that you can say you get no comment or trackback spam, you are not going to see too many new comments on your Web site.

You need to find the thin line between filtering crap and keeping comment posting easy for your readers.

Need more? Check out this list of anti-spam plugins via the WordPress Web site. The list looks a little out of date with some of the links, but should be a good place to get started at least.