Well, Kitten’s Spam Words Plug-In, which I wrote about here was certainly better than just sending all comments to moderation, but as is to be expected the Spam-Sleazes (especially the texas-holdem idiot) are forever spoofing new e-mail addresses and IPs and they kept slipping through… And as the overall volume has continued to increase, going in and deleting dozens of unwanted comments every day has become an onerous task. So, donning my geek hat, I went searching for stronger weaponry this afternoon.

Back to the WordPress Support Forums, the seat of all WP knowledge, more useful even than the Wiki at pointing towards well-tested solutions to problems such as this one… From threads such as this one (currently at 101 posts) , it’s pretty clear that this is a sticky problem, and one that is affecting much of the WP community.

I wanted a solution that wouldn’t let the texas holdem guy and his ilk even get their drivel as far as my moderation queue. I wanted the Holy Grail of comment spam solutions. Just kill them. Puh-leeeze.

After much reading of the trials and tribulations of other blog owners, I came to the conclusion that it was time to try StationLabs’ SpamWordBlock. It’s a straightforward plug-in that sends the user to a stark white page with a big, friendly “Spam Words Found” notice - the comment is never sent! Woo Hoo!!

Test it for yourself. It’s a beautiful thing! And to top things off quite nicely, I grabbed the latest version of Jay Allen’s blacklist - available here.

So now with Kitten’s Spam Words as a backup, I should catch any new and creative spellings of certain libido-enhancing substances in short order. I’ll report back with updates.

Cheers!