Best blog platform for easy commenting but little spam

November 6, 2009 5:12 AM

Best blogging software to allow easy commenting by strangers but avoiding comment spam.

I want to start a new non-commercial blog that encourages comments from readers, but avoids as much comment spam as possible. I realise this is tough, but what is the best current solution? I am not up to date on this area, but I want a middle ground that perhaps avoids a registration stage or moderating every comment. Is there possibly a comment option that allows a comment to be written, but it only goes live after a link delivered to a valid email is clicked? Is there a better solution? I feel captchas are not as effective as they have been, yet I want to avoid robot spam, but also make drive by valid comments be possible. Is this a pipe dream?
I can probably install any suitable software, but my preference is a *nix based solution or hosted. Free is better but not essential.

posted by bystander to Technology (10 answers total)

If you try Wordpress, you could add Akismet or Defensio plugins. Both of them analyse every comment and will block spam. Defensio will learn the type of comments you tend to get and offer you slightly more control than Akismet.
posted by Solomon at 5:18 AM on November 6, 2009

Solomon has said exactly what I came in to say!
posted by ceri richard at 5:52 AM on November 6, 2009

Akismet blocks 100% of the comment span on the 30+ WordPress blogs I've setup to run for clients (and myself!) in the past year.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:03 AM on November 6, 2009

Another good one is spam-karma. I have used it for the past two years, and it does pretty much exactly what you ask. Legitimate comments appear automatically, obvious SPAM is deleted, and stuff on the border needs approval to either go live or be deleted as SPAM. 99% of the time the borderline stuff is SPAM and can be safely ignored.
posted by Otis at 6:11 AM on November 6, 2009

As another data point, wordpress+akismet allows anonymous and credited comments on my blog while catching the 100+ spam comments each day. I don't need to do a thing, and works about 99% perfectly.
posted by msbrauer at 7:16 AM on November 6, 2009

Another vote for Spam-Karma, which I've been happily using on my various blogs for something like 3/4 years. And you can even add the Akismet plugin for Spam-Karma (although it tends to bring its lot of false-positives...): best of both worlds! :)
posted by XiBe at 7:57 AM on November 6, 2009

You could outsource commenting altogether within Wordpress (or your CMS of choice), and use something like Disqus - it's a centralised commenting platform that works within Wordpress, and means you don't have to maintain plugins like Akismet. You also get to benefit from their features (threaded comments, openID integration, etc.)
posted by ukdanae at 8:11 AM on November 6, 2009

I recently switched over to WP-Spamfree for some wordpress blogs I haev. It works really, really good even compared to akismet and requires no sign up.
posted by shownomercy at 9:31 AM on November 6, 2009

I've been using Spam-Karma for years on multiple blogs and it has done a really impressive job. I particularly like that it doesn't depend on a 3rd party web service, and so can do its thing as long as my server is up and running.
posted by Good Brain at 10:45 AM on November 6, 2009

Thanks guys. I'll Askismet or Defensio a whirl. If they have any problems its good to know there is a local option in spam-karma available.
posted by bystander at 2:45 AM on November 7, 2009