Want comments? Disable WP-SpamFree
I was using WP-SpamFree for months with my Wordpress installation. I thought it was working great. Barely any spam comments even made it to the Akismet plugin, but I didn’t realize how many actual commenters were unable to post on my site because of it.
About a month ago I set up another blog for one of my good friends. Many people kept telling her that they were unable to post comments on her blog and they kept getting a message saying that their post looked “spammy” and would not even submit at all. Until then, I didn’t realize that WP-SpamFree was blocking so many people from commenting. I just thought people didn’t care to comment on my site for the most part. That wasn’t the case…
The amount of comments on both her site and mine have really increased since I disabled WP-SpamFree on both of them. This is just a heads up to those who use the plugin. It seems to cause more problems than it is worth. I highly recommend that if you want people to be able to comment on your site that you disable the plugin right away.
I have found that using the Akismet and NoSpamNX plugins together work great. I rarely have any comments that need moderated. Just make sure your theme/template is coded correctly and the NoSpamNX plugin works perfectly with no modifications.
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20 Responses to “Want comments? Disable WP-SpamFree”
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[...] Want comments? Disable WP-SpamFree [...]
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[...] WordPress Comment Blacklist.Steve of SteveoFC.com had previously complained about Wp-Spam Free @ Want comments? Disable WP-SpamFree. Apparently some folks were complaining of their comments not getting through and getting a message [...]
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[...] a bit, I found a few articles that reported operational problems with WP-SpamFree, such as this one here. Granted, the number of operational problems compared to the benefits WP-SpamFree is small, it is [...]
Steve works in the IT field, focusing mainly on Networking, Database Management, Web Development and Programming. | 
I’m glad you got it straightened out. I didn’t like being told my comment looked spammy! LOL
This post is a great heads up for others who are using the WP-SpamFree.
Did you find that Akismet on its own was insufficient? I’ve been using it for months and I’d say it has a 99.9%+ accuracy.
I usually get at least 30 comments a day that are placed in the spam category by Akismet. If I just let them sit there they add up quickly. So rather than deleting them multiple times a day, I installed NoSpamNX which eliminates just about all of the bot generated spam and automatically deletes it before Akismet even gets a chance to put it in the spam section.
Hey Steve,
I’m sorry to hear that you had an issue with WP-SpamFree. If you were getting comments consistently blocked, you most likely had a configuration issue or conflict. 99.9 % of these are a quick fix. We provide a Troubleshooting Guide and free support. I understand your frustration, but it would have been nice if you had at least asked for support before posting this, as I think it presents an inaccurate representation of the plugin. We’re to here to help if you would like. Other wise, hope you have a good 4th of July weekend.
- Scott
That’s the problem. I didn’t know they were being blocked. I still got some comments, so I never really gave it much thought. All of a sudden people kept telling me, and my friend on her blog, that they couldn’t comment, but other comments were still coming through. At that point I realized there was a problem. As soon as I disabled the plugin everything was fine again. Comments have nearly tripled on both blogs. I don’t see how it could have been a configuration issue seeing as though there is barely anything to configure. I looked through the troubleshooting guide and everything was correct. I know how to install plugins, this is no different. The fact that some people were still able to comment shows me that it couldn’t have been an issue with the configuration.
Hey Steve,
The most common configuration issues aren’t with the plugin but rather the server, and these will show up with other plugins sooner or later, for example permissions issues, or plugin conflicts. Turning on the “Blocked Comment Logging Mode” shows us exactly what’s going on most of the time. Either way, I’m confident I could have helped you figure it out within minutes.
Ok first off, “blocked comment logging mode” wasn’t even included until version 2.0. That came out when, the middle of March? Not very helpful considering I was using the plugin long before that. Over the last couple of months it would have given me an idea that there was something wrong, but obviously I didn’t enable it when it did finally become available because I wasn’t aware there was an issue.
Even if you could help me fix it now, which I don’t care to do, that doesn’t help the fact that hundreds of possible comments were blocked without me knowing.
Unless there is some magical way you can come up with some way to get all of those comments back, including the people who weren’t even able to post at all, I don’t care whether or not it was a simple fix.
Steve,
You might want to consider one thing though…
If you didn’t even take the effort to contact us before posting an article with a kindof inflamatory title like this, then you’re not exactly putting truthful information out there about the plugin.
We put a lot effort into developing this plugin for free and provide free tech support for users.
I’m all for people posting about their experiences, but before I post something really negative about someone else or their product (especially when it’s provided free), I’ll make every effort to make sure there isn’t a problem on my end first.
The problem is sometimes other plugins have an effect on configuration issues or file/folder permissions, and it really has nothing to do with this plugin, but because of another plugin’s misstep or poor coding, this one is prevented from doing its job properly and because it seems to be the culprit, gets blamed – inaccurately. Those are the kind of things we would have helped you diagnose. (We have built in extra safeguards to try to prevent this in recent versions, but we can’t always predict what another plugin will do.)
YES! I am blown away at how many more comments I get by using this!
Steve thanks for the heads up as I was about to install it.
I TOTALLY understand the frustration with you guys. I’ve been using Wp-Spamfree for quite sometime and I love it cos it even helps me keep some spammy folks from commenting on my blog via blocking their IP. If legitimate comments are lost, I really don’t know. I’ll activate the “Blocked Comment Logging Mode” and see what the logs bring up.
I’ll keep you posted.
Scott,
I understand Steve’s frustration, and I have to say that WP-SpamFree’s FAQs and docs that I can find are not particularly helpful if you have a file permissions issue, like me. I want to try the plugin, but not unless I can use the 7-day logging feature to make sure only spam is being caught. I can’t, and instead keep getting the error about the logging file supposedly not being writable. That isn’t the case, however, as the error continues to show regardless of whether the directories in question are set at 755, 775 or even 777 and whether the files inside the data directory are 644 or 666. I even deleted and replaced htaccess.txt, which installed itself as being owned by user 99 (thus at first I was unable to bump it up to 666).
Long story short, on WP 2.9.1 on an Apache VPS on which I have no other permission issues and run numerous WP blogs, I can’t get past the permissions problem.
Does anyone else remember using Dr. Dave’s SpamKarma? It was the hands down BEST spam killing plugin. Why do these talented developers insist on reinventing the wheel (and a shoddy one at that)? Why not put aside hubris and recognize that SpamKarma’s approach to filtering spam was superb and just take the existing code and bring it up to current standards? Or does that make too much sense?
Hi,
I just wanted to let you know that I ran a 7 day test on the plug-in and have written a blog post about my experience. Kinda like a review.
I left a trackback. Hope you don’t mind? Do have a fabulous week.
Surprisingly enough I just got the Your comment looks like spam message right after I submitted the comment above. I used the back button, waited for the page to load completely then tried resubmitting it again and it went through.
So I’m guessing that even NoSpamNX isn’t foolproof either
NoSpamNX doesn’t give a message like that…
If anything, it was the Akismet plugin that did it.
NoSpamnNX does nothing but add 2 fields, that are hidden to the user via CSS. If anything is “typed” in those 2 fields the post is automatically marked as spam because bots just fill in all fields. So like I said, it wasn’t NoSpamNX that did it. Also, my original blog post was nearly a year ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if by now some of the bugs have been worked out.
I will give your blog post a read a little later.
Sorry thought it was the NoSpamNX plug-in that brought up the message. From your above description of the plug-in, it seems the plug-in only works against spam comments left by BOTS. There might not be any protection against spam comments left by HUMANS.
Anyway, anti-spam plug-ins are still trying to device better methods of catching human spam comments.