A couple of days ago, popular Wordpress anti-spam plug-in Akismet went down due to some DNS issues. During that short period, tons of comment and trackback spam went thru like fireworks in the 4th of July.
Most of us running Wordpress practically rely on Akismet to combat spam and according to its overall stats, 93% of all comments are spam (the real figures would be a bit higher than that). Today alone, there are close to 2 million spam being filtered out by Akismet. But what if Akismet fails again and the next time would be more disastrous? Thousands upon thousands of comments to either manually moderate, delete or flag as spam. That task could take hours and maybe even days especially for blog networks with dozens or hundreds of blogs to maintain.
That’s why we need a backup plan or an alternative form of defense. They might not be as robust and comprehensive as Akismet but at least they’ll be able to kick in when Akismet is down (or being attacked itself).
Here’s what’s on top of my list for Akismet alternatives:
- Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma 2 — before Akismet, this plugin is one of the best out there and probably still one of the toughest anti-spam contenders.
- Bad Behavior 2 – another solid plugin that’s going neck in neck with Spam Karma (pre-Akismet era)
- Elliot Back’s Wordpress Hascash – used to be my favorite but sometimes blocks real visitors from commenting
The three mentioned above plus a host of other secondary anti-spam bot tools like Math Comment Spam Protection, Comment Policy plugin, and Comment Authorization plugin, aren’t only for people contemplating on a Plan B but those who want more spam protection as well.
So, who said one is enough?
