Given I still haven’t got the error for TypePad AntiSpam fixed on UMW Blogs, but after a recommendation from the WordPress forum legend @andre_r I installed the spam fighting plugin Cookies for Comments, and so far I am blown away by how well it’s been working. It has been running on the site since Wednesday and the spam dam is holding strong. I am not entirely surprised because Donncha (of WPMu fame) is behind this one. It seems like this plugin works through setting cookies and checking a cookie that has been set. And for added protection you can set some code in .htaccess to kill the spam before they even get to your site—which I have running on UMW Blogs. It has seemed amazingly effective. On any given week the main UMW Blogs blog gets anywhere from 2000 to 3000 spams, this week so far (it has been 4 days) we got 40-50. That is mind blowing to me.
I’m not sure if there’s going to be some major spam wormhole that opens up one day soon and UMW Blogs is covered with millions of festering spams—it is kind of a nightmare vision I’ve been having on and off for years—but as of now I am blown away by just how strong Cookies for Comments has help up against the spam apocalypse. Anyone out there have any issues with Cookies for Comments I might want to know about? If so, let me know, if not, then all the better 🙂
It’s been rock solid/consistent at about the same percentage as you are seeing for us since we installed it.
That’s a great result, but I hope the spammers don’t look carefully at what’s stopping their comments. They might notice the cookie. Also if your site is a big enough target they might go to the trouble of updating their bots. Something like this plugin wouldn’t have a chance on WordPress.com for instance.
Fingers crossed that the spammers will continue to be held back just as successfully in the future! 🙂
@Ron,
Glad to hear that, I was afraid we were an anomoly.
@Donncha,
First off, thanks for the plugin, it is working beautifully for us as of now. And given we are about 5000 blogs we may be lucky enough that they overlook us. But just in case I am monitoring the sitewide comment feed pretty regularly to see if the dam breaks, if it does I will let you know to get a sense of how they might have worked around it. Either way, thanks again, this is a wild solution.