Anyone who owns a blog knows that comment spammers are constantly trying to leave their spammy links all over your site.

I have tried various methods to try and keep them away over the past few months. Finally I think I have found a winning combination.

To combat Comment Spammers I am using 3 WordPress plugins. They all do a different job which means my blog has 3 lines of defence against the spammers.

Another thing to remember about the comment spammers is that usually it is an automated process. There is usually a bot doing all the work instead of a human sitting there typing it on every single blog. The bot will be running from a pre-selected database of websites with a pre-selected comment to post, this allows them to hit a huge amount of websites in a small amount of time.

OK here are the current plugins I am running to help prevent comment spam appearing of my blog:

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
This plugin is my first line of defence against comment spam. It means that anyone who wants to leave a comment on any of my blog articles have to enter the correct code from the Captcha Image. This is great as not many bots can do this meaning spammers will have to manually leave a comment.
Download SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam: Here

Akismet
If this spammers manage to get past the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugin then Akismet is my next line of defence. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. Any comments that it thinks is spam gets moved to the spam folder where you can review it.
Download Akismet: Here

WP-Ban
This plugin is my last line of defence and is actually my favourite. If the comment spammers get past the first two plugins this plugin allows you to ban them by their IP Address, IP Range, Host Name or Referrer. Once they have been banned you can choose a custom message that will be displayed to them instead of them viewing your site. You can even view how many times they have tried to access your site.
Download WP-Ban: Here

Well there we go, they are the plugins I use to save my site from spam comments. As a little bit of extra protection I have also selected to manually approve all new comments on my blog. With all these features in place it has cut my comment spam down to zero.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to post them below. I would also love to hear how you combat comment spam on your site.