Want to know how to rid WordPress of all spam in one step? I mean ALL spam too, comment spam, pingback and trackback spam – EVERYTHING!

It’s not very often that I come across a plugin that I’ve never heard of, never used before, never read about – and it turns out to be one of the best ones that I’ve used in years! Probably the most famous plugin of all is “Askimet”, not only because it’s included with WordPress, but because it was created (and is constantly updated) by WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg. It’s been the de-facto standard for so long, I never considered using anything else. What happenned here completely proves that no matter how good something is, there is ALWAYS room for something more outstanding to come along and dethrone it!

I would like to introduce you to the completely free WP-Spamfree Anti-Spam plugin for WordPress! I can honestly say I didn’t initially believe it’s ability to “replace Askimet”, but I was kind of intrigued when I read the description “finally there is an anti-spam plugin for WordPress that provides an effective solution, without CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, or other inconvenience to site visitors”.

I mean, come on – who isn’t just sick to death of answering a question or those damn captcha’s? So like a wide-eyed housewife who just watched yet another informercial about the greatest way to keep the floors clean with the most revolutionary vacuum EVAR – I installed it just to see what would happen.

Sometimes I get so busy working I don’t get to post to this blog as often as I’d like, but regardless of how infrequent my posting seems to be – it sure doesn’t slow down the amount of incoming comments on a daily basis. With more comments means more spam. If you’re a regular blogger I’m sure you’ve noticed lately the amount of “automated comment spam” that’s been floating about. If you get a comment like “good post – keep up the good work!”, that’s not a real comment, it’s some idiot that is using a web site or automated software to spam blogs all over the world with automated comments. In fact, I’ve found that nearly ALL comments that don’t directly relate to the page they were posted are FAKE.

Some of them are REALLY clever too, let me give you some recent examples:

  • “Whats the best free hosting and web site creator service on the net?”
  • “Anyone had any luck with 7search.com?”
  • “This is great and helpful. Thank you for posting :)”
  • “This is very nice tips… Thanks.”
  • “have good information on a good site would be useful to people thank you”
  • “What an awesome theme – did you design it yourself?”
  • “The idea is very interesting. Maybe someday I’ll do that.”

It’s funny, because I’ve seen many of these comments posted on other (very busy, and very reputable) blogs – but I know for a fact they’re automated SPAM! I might not have thought much about it if I got just one, but when I get a dozen per day with the same phrase and URL – I KNOW for a fact it’s spam!

WP-Spamfree Features:

  • Ability to use two different methods to set cookies for regular commenters
  • Ability to use an enhanced comment blacklist, which instead of sending comments for moderation – completely blocks them
  • Block any commenter’s IP with one click
  • Disable pingback’s or trackback’s with one click
  • Turn on or off user’s ability to comment behind a proxy
  • Turn on or off additional technical data in comment notification emails
  • Setup a completely free “contact form” for your blog

Check out the last feature, this Anti-Spam plugin also allows you to setup a completely Spam Free Contact form! So, you might even be able to replace 2 other plugins with WP-SpamFree!

One last thing I’ll show you beore I go, and it’s what got me thinking about this first thing today for this post. WP-Spamfree has cut down my blog spam by 98%, but still once or twice per day one of these idiots that bought auto blog commenting software manage to get a comment through. Take a look at this image:

WP-Spamfree email details example

Every single comment email I get for my blog has these technical details added by WP-Spamfree. Now, I was pretty sure this comment was spam since all it had was 3 sentences completely copied from my post and pasted into the comment, but look at the details – the “Reverse DNS Authenticity” is “Possibly Forged”. That (combined with the comment content) tells me this is bonafide spam. You can’t see it in the image, but above these details is a links to “blacklist this IP address” with one click!

If I were to make a list of the greatest new plugins I’d found in the last year – so far WP-Spamfree would be at the top of my list. I’m proud to recommend it – click here to download WP-Spamfree.

Oh – in case you’re wondering if I’ve actually deactivated Askimet – I have!