My two cents on Captch and SPAM!

I seem to have a lot of new bloggers stopping by lately.  I am so happy to have you all here, it really does make me smile.  Being a not so old blogger, I thought I would take a moment to talk about Comments and Spam.  

Specifically, I would like to talk about word verification on your comment section.  I know there are one hundred and fifty two thousand posts out there about how evil Captcha is and why no one should use it.  

Personally, even having to type the name, email address, and website stuff that is getting popular slows me down and irks me... but at least that info serves a purpose.  Plus I do not have to spend extra time trying to decipher gobbledygook. 

Now I know, at this point many of you are thinking, but word verification does serve a point!  It keeps spam from my comment section!  This is true, but at the same time it is annoying and driving your guests crazy.  Plus (and here is the key) there are other ways to deal with spam that do not affect your guests. 

For instance, 99% of my spam comes from just one post.  It is an old post that I think only the spammers read any more.  The solution for me was to simply turn off the comments for this one post.  You can do this easily by editing your post.  Look to the right under OPTIONS.  The first Option is to either allow or don't allow reader comments.  Easy peasy fix that only effect the one post.

Other option available on Blogger is Comment Moderation.  You can actually set this to moderate all comments, or to only moderate on posts that are a certain # of days old.   For example, I have my blog set to moderate on post that are older than 14 days.  Typically real people are going to comment on posts from the last week, so they will not be effected by this moderation.   

If needed you can always set this to moderate all comments.  That way they will not post until you approve them.  Essentially giving you the chance to delete spam before any one else sees it.  This option may mean more work for you, but I will say that approving or deleting comments in Blogger is pretty simple.  It works like most spam filters in email.  Plus the work is on you, and not passed along to your readers with annoying word verification puzzles.  Happy readers means more return visits and more comments!  Definitely worth a little extra work on your part!

So now you have my two cents on the whole word verification thing.  I hope that having a couple new options helps.  Please keep in mind that this is what works for me here, I know that it may not work for all blogs.  If you have any other tips or suggestions, I'd love to hear them too!

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