With my recent re-design I added the new about page, where my users can ask me questions. Instead of getting questions from users I started to get spam from spam bots and I had to manually clear them every night. Last week I was so frustrated that I thought of even taking it down.
But then I realized that I had faced the same problem some time back and immediately Akismet came to my mind. I quickly went to the website to looked at the API and thought of integrating it with my about page script.
I was about to build a wrapper for the APIs, but something with in me made me to use Google and within few moments I found that it was already done by Andrew and Paul. I downloaded the code integrated it with my script and within a few minutes my about page became immune to spam. Wow! Now I could go to bed 10 minutes earlier everyday thanks to Akismet.
I actually did not write the Akismet class for PHP4, a chap by the name of Paul Duncan did. His link is http://pablotron.org/?cid=1485
Hi Andrew,
I was under the impression that you wrote it, anyways will include Paul’s name also.
Cheers,
Sudar
Akismet is really excellent API. I think Akismet along with an image CAPTCHA implementation, can really stamp out any comment spam. But I observe one gap. WordPress has Akismet but no CAPTCHA and blogger does the reverse way.
What I feel is that both are required in a finer mix so that with CAPTCHA, spam comments do not enter the system at all, instead of recieving, storing and then sorting out as SPAM. What do you say?
Hi Deepak,
As you have said Akimet is an excellent system and no doubt in that. But I some how feel that CAPTCHA can cause usability problem. Leave alone the people who use screen readers but even normal people sometimes tremble over when recognize a CAPTCHA. More over I feel that using a CAPTCHA system may frustrate some users and users should be given the minimum barrier to comment on an article. Thatââ?¬â?¢s why I even allow anonymous comments. Because that way you will get the actual feed back (even if it is negative). May be thatââ?¬â?¢s just me who feels that way 😉
Cheers,
Sudar