Everybody hates SPAM!  And no i am not talking about the processed canned meat, however canned meat does not sound that appetizing.  What I am talking about is the annoying comments that are automatically posted to your blog that just contain a bunch links promoting commercial services.  If you own a Wordpress blog and have the comments enabled, which is something I highly recommend, then you are bound to get spammy comments!  However, I have Good News for you!  There is a way to prevent comment and contact form spam…

How To Combat Comment Spam:

There are two great Wordpress plugins you can download to your Wordpress blog that will take care of your Spam problems:

1.)  WP-SpamFree

WP-Spam Free is an extremely powerful WordPress anti-spam plugin that eliminates blog comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam.  This is a Free Wordpress plugin that I use along with Akismet, which I will get into later.   It works invisibly without CAPTCHA’s, challege questions or other inconveniences to your site visitors. The plugin includes spam-free contact form feature as well.  It virtually elimantes automated comment spam send out from bots.

*Download the latest version of  WP-SpamFree

2.) Akismet

Akismet, on of the most popular Wordpress plugins, is a spam filtering service, which filters link spam from blog comments and spam trackback pings.  You may have noticed when you look your plugins menu that you already have Akismet installed in your Wordpress blog, this is because it is highly recommend that you activate and use it! However, you must activate the plugin in order for it to work!

*If for some reason you do not have the Akismet plugin you can Download the latest version HERE

How to Activate Akismet

1.)  In your Plugins menu you must press activate next to the Akisment plugin

2.) You will need a API key:  Every user of Wordpress.com automatically gets a API key (*Note you do not want to share this key with anyone!)

- To find your API key simply go to your dashboard -> click users ->Your Profile

- You should see a sentance that says ” your Wordpress.com API key is ” where your key is the 12 numbers following

- You can see your key at  http://dashboard.wordpress.com/wp-admin/profile.php

3.) If you do not have a wordpress account and still want to use Akismet you can register on Wordpress.com and obtain a API key!

4.) once you have a API key and you activated Akismet then you need to go to plugins-> Akismet-> Configuration and enter your API key and that is it you are all set!

*For any Questions regarding Akismet you can go HERE!

Combat Contact Form Spam:

There are two great Wordpress plugins you can download to help combat Contact Form Spam

1.) Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form v.2.0WP

The Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form plugin for Wordpress is one of the best, most accessible, spam proof contact forms out there.  This plugin allows you to add a spam proof contact form to a wordpress page or a template.  It is fully customisable with CSS, and even has a few themes contained to get you started.

2.) cforms II

The cforms II plugin for Wordpress offers convenient deployment of multiple contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.  It also allows you to customize the messages, the fields that are required, the email addresses to be used, and even create different contact forms to be used in different locations of the site.  The cforms II allows for spam-free environment and is relatively easy to customize.

Till Next Post,

Krista

***If You Like What You Read Feel Free To Share It!

Tip of The Day Number 2:  Wordpress All In One SEO Plugin

A great wordpress plug-in that I highly recommend you download for FREE is the “All In One SEO” Plug-in!  This tool will help you with optimizing your wordpress blog, and help your overall ranking in search engine results.

Some of the Key Features of the “All In One SEO” plugin are as follows:

- Home Page Optimization: Allows you to make your home page title, home page meta description and meta keywords detailed and separate from your other pages.

- Per Post Page Tweaking: Allows you to optimize each individual post on your blog (title, description, keywords). Remember what you write in the boxes provided with reflect what keywords the search engines will use to describe your website in the search engine results! So make sure your keyword, title, description properly describe the rest of the content on the site.

- The plug-in also Reorders page titles to optimize search engine coverage.

- Takes care of duplicate content: The “No Index” options prevent the search engines from indexing pages that contain redundant content such as category and tag result pages.

**To Download the “All in one SEO” Plug-in for Wordpress Click Here

Installation directions for the “All in one SEO” Plug-in:

1.) Click the link above to go to the download page

2.) Click the download link on the right side of the download page

3.) Save the Zipped file to your computer

4.) Make sure to unzip the folder and save it

5.) Upload the unzipped folder to your hosting account wordpress folder under:  /wp-content/plugins/

6.) Go to your wordpress dashboard and click on Plugins on the left side of the screen (you should see the “All in one SEO”)

7.) Click activate

8.) Visit the SEO options page (either settings or options – All in one)

*Dave Olsen Consulting put together a great video on how to use this “All in one SEO” plugin.  Check it out!

Till Next Post,

Krista

***If You Like What You Read Feel Free To Share It!