BootsnAll Travel Community

I've recently had quite a few spam comments on blog entries. These are obvious spam, not at all related to the topic of the blog entry and seems to be advertising of some sort - just a few odd words, like "feeding newborn baby" or "definicion de parabola".

So far, I've just deleted them - or marked them as spam, after I discovered that option. Thought I'd let BnA know and hear if others are experiencing this.

Hi Sophie, we have a couple of spam guards on BnA blogs. One is called Akismet and you can see a link to it under the 'Manage' link in your blog admin. This will show you the comments that have been trapped by akismet before they get published on your blog.

The other is the little code that readers have to type in before they can submit a comment. These two methods tend to weed out the majority of the automated spam, but some can till sneak through.

let me know if you're finding the spam getting through is increasing and I'll try to see if it's happening a lot on other BnA blogs too.

Hi Chris,

I'm not getting that many, but they are now increasingly sleazy, and from URL-addresses with seriously dubious names. Should I just delete them?

Yes, absolutely feel free to delete them. No need to keep them on your blog.

Same here, just deleted an extremely sleazy spam message. Don't hesitate!

BTW, Akismet rocks. It catches a lot of spam!

Although Askimet did a good job so far, every couple of days I'm getting obviously obscene spam comments and it's getting tiresome having to read those one-liners. Can we 'train' Askimet to weed them out (i.e. label comments as spam like emails in Yahoo, so Askimet looks for similar?)

I would also like to turn off commenting on the blog for the time being. Very few readers ever comment on my entries (although there are a few mates who pop up every now and then--but they can email!) All the spams are for older entries anyway. Actually--closing comments after a few days/weeks of posting was a good feature of the old blogs!

Hey, whalewatcher - I checked with Chris, and he says that comments can be turned off, it's just that it's "only on a post by post basis by the author" (meaning the author of the blog, not the comments).

Thanks, I must have overlooked that. Going to try it now. For some reason, all these obscene spammers target a single entry posted last November...

[EDIT:] Nope, I can't see how it's done. There are all sorts of options, but not one for 'close/disallow comments for this post'. Anyway, it looks like Askimet has got hold of them (finally!)