TOPIC: Stopping spammers making comments

There are two options right now - require registration to comment at all OR require approval before publishing. I currently have all comments moderated but that slows conversations down. What would be good would be to allow registered guests to comment (without approval) AND let others comment but require their comments to be approved before publishing. Then if a registered guest spammed, they could have their privilege revoked. If a non-registered guest spams, their post would not get approved. IP banning is good but I suspect spammers have a large number of IP addresses to use.

Hey John,
That is not a bad suggestion actually! When we finally manage to make the transition to 2.5/3.0 architecture this should be easily achievable.

Here on compojoom we don't have a lot of spammers actually. I get like 1-2 spam comments a month. I think that what you need to do is - captcha for unregistered & akismet. Then you need to install some plugins like honeypot that prevent spammers from actually looking at your site. The truth is - there are some hosting providers that take care of their network and some that don't. Maybe ask your hosting provider what they are doing to reduce the spam going at your site & look at hosting providers that take this thing seriously.

Regards,
Daniel

I run my own dedicated server and it includes configserver's firewall which stops hackers but not spammers (typically 10 permanent blocks per day - but the permanent list is max 200). The site using compojoom gets about 700 visitors per day and about 10,000 uniques per month and I get about 2-4 spam comments per day. I use akismet but I have no way of knowing what spam it stops (unlike on WordPress). I tried recaptcha but it annoyed users and didn't seem to make much difference. Right now I have to approve every comment but despite the traffic, I don't get too many comments. It's not really a blog as much as a series of articles and news. Honeypot for Joomla is not compatible with 2.5 - they say 1.5 only. I hope this helps you understand my problem. Any suggestions for a plugin for 2.5?

I have resolved this problem by requiring that all commenters be registered. That transferred the spammers to wanting approval of registration. I stopped that with a plugin in Joomla called ECC+. Now, I am spam free - although fewer commenters too!

I am now using the latest version of your product (5.0Rc2) and generally think it's a great improvement. I'm allowing registration and these people can comment without using captcha but I'm also allowing others to comment without registering but they have to pass a re-captcha test. (You suggested how to do this to someone else). I have also implemented Akismet. So far, no spam! BUT, the non registered people do not have to enter their name or email address and although there's an option where they can change the default "anonymous" name, most do not. Is there any way to be sure to get someone's name at least - even if it's fake. Better than a whole lot of people called anonymous.

Hey John,
I'm working on modifications to the template. There will be an option to make the name field required and also to start with the name & email visible.

Regards,
Daniel

That would be great - Hopefully soon!