Eradicating Comment Spam

Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been fighting a losing battle with comment spam for quite a while.

I tried blocking IP addresses to no avail.

I tried moderating comments which stopped the spam from getting onto my blog but created a ton of extra work.

I begged for a captcha to force people to fill out a field of random letters and numbers before being able to post a comment. I got that about a month ago and although it is still in place, it had no effect whatsoever which suprised and deflated me. I was beginning to lose hope.

Then, fairly quietly, last week TypePad rolled out "word banning" allowing me to put simple words into their comment spam filter instead of just IP addresses.

I am not going to say what words I’ve banned or how many I’ve banned but I will say this.  This new feature has all but eradicated the comment spam from my blog. I am stunned and delighted.

Thanks TypePad.