Taking Spam Out of Your Site - Plug-Ins and Anti-Spam Tools
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Though it may seem otherwise, spam doesn't hit just your site; it's everywhere. You find it not just in your blog's comments or in your online forums, but also in your email and even your favorite online haunts. While you may choose to use your Internet skills for the good of Web site creation, others are writing special scripts designed to crawl Web sites and dump tons of information and links into open areas where users are allowed to participate. The result is spam.
The solutions are many. Looking for ways to reduce the spam on your site? The good news is, so is everyone else. There are a ton of add-ons, plug-ins and other downloadable tools which are expressly designed to eliminate (or at least reduce) the amount of spam you're seeing on your pages. Find and use these online options; they're out there for sites like yours.
For bloggers who use WordPress to create content, the WP site itself offers many helpful tools and features which can help you greatly reduce the amount of comment spam you see. Once logged into your WordPress account, go to the Discussions tab under the Settings menu. Under Administration, select Settings Panel and you'll find many comment options which allow you to exercise more control over what goes on your blog. From here, you can decide whether or not you'd like to receive email notification of events, and you'll be able to set the parameters of what you consider comment spam. This helps reduce spam which takes away from your content. The WordPress Codex offers an extensive section on these tools and features.
Other plug-ins and tools are designed to work with WordPress and other sites to reduce the amount of spam you receive. Spam Karma works very seamlessly with WordPress to stop spam in its tracks. To use this program, you must have WordPress 1.5.1 or higher and MySQL 4.0 or higher.
Bad Behavior is another one of the many free programs out there designed to prevent spambots (but not search engines) from finding your pages. If you lower your site's likelihood of spambot targeting, you're lowering the amount of spam you see in your forums, comments and discussion groups.
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