…….
You’ve just finished designing another great website. “It looks good, feels good, and is good,” you say proudly to yourself.
Your client, Mr. Smith, is pretty pleased too so you go on to your next assignment.
A few days later, you get a call from him.
“Hey I’m getting too much spam in my website email, comment section, and forums. What are you going to do about it?”
Your mind goes blank as you reply in a monotone voice, “Er, sure. I’ll get back to you on that…”
Spam is the bane of anyone who runs a website. If webspam infiltrates yours, who you gonna call? In this case, it won’t be Ghostbusters. What you really need are Spam Busters.
At the moment, there isn’t a magic wand that you can wave around to make blog spam go away.
But some spam is good…the type that come from legitimate businesses you deal with and offer you special coupons, discounts or news. Spam in sushi is also a winner.
But there are some things that you can do to reduce the amount of bad and bothersome spam on your websites. But let’s get started with a question first to understand what spam is all about.
Where Does Spam Come From?
If you said “their mommies,” go to the principal’s office for being a joker.
Spam is generated by spammers in two ways: manually or automatically.
Automatic spam tools look on the Internet for keywords, comment areas, and other vulnerable places to spam. The manual way incorporates cheap labor to do this same function.
In any event, here are a few tools that you may be able to use to keep the spam down.
.
Apache and CAPTCHA and Java, Oh My!
(Repeat three times)
CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Cute, eh? CAPTCHA is basically a challenging device that acts as a gatekeeper by requiring an interactive response from the source that wants to post a comment.
If it is a computer, it won’t be able to do this (so far). If it is a human, the response will be entered. This sort of challenge usually comes in the form of retyping a word or phrase before a comment can be posted.
CAPTCHA is pretty effective and can be implemented through a plugin. In some cases, CAPTCHA may already be a feature of the CMS you’re using, which will make life easier for you.
If you’re using a standard HTML <form> for your input, you can still stop spam by using a technique that uses JavaScript to do this. The technique can be found by going here.
If your web server is Apache based, and you or the Admin has access to its configuration, you might want to check out a mod security program by going here.
Also make sure that any references in your websites do not contain any contact information such as support@blahblahblah.com.
So how will people contact you? You can supply the information by hiding the things that bots are looking for: the “.com” and the “@” symbol.
All you have to do is to replace the elements by reformatting it to say, “support [at] blahblahblah [dot] com. Your users will figure it out and add in the missing pieces.
It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
We may never completely eliminate spam from our lives, but there are available tools out there that can help turn the tide against Spam Vader and his evil empire. May the Spam Be NOT with you.
DID YOU LIKE THIS DESIGN POST? IF SO, PLEASE HELP US BY ADDING US AS ONE OF YOUR TECHNORATI FAVORITES AND BY ADDING OUR ARTICLES TO YOUR FAVORITE SOCIAL BOOKMARKING SITES (BELOW)
del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | Netscape | RawSugar | reddit | Simpy | Spurl | StumbleUpon | Yahoo MyWeb |
11 Comments
Pretty basic article. There are many other to limit SPAM.
1. Moderate all comments.
2. Require registration to post.
3. Require a working email address then send a message to first time posters to validate the address.
4. Fields hidden by CSS. The spambot sees it and fills it in. The human doesn’t see it and leaves it blank. Your code ignores any comments with the field filled in.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for the additional info. The tips are additional ways to keep nasty spam out. The truth of the matter is that many of those simple tips are not implemented by web developers on their sites. Also, some spam still squeaks through in spite of these safeguards. The ways to stop spam could probably fill a book. A combination of software tools, registration, and moderating posts (which is sometimes impossible due to the heavy traffic) are all but a few tools for a web developer’s arsenal against spam.
Btw, you might want to check out some of the links on your website…some are disabled. Maybe too much spam?
Thanks for dropping by and adding the tips. We really appreciate it.
Hey that was a really nice post… I work in a website designing company and appreciate it a lot…
I work for a web-design company, and this type of query is very common, however for contact forms we find that CAPTCHA is the most useful method for filtering them annoying spam emails.
There are also some JavaScript email text link scramblers. Google javascript email scrambler.
You can also use the token meathod to send forms instead of captcha.
Nice post. I’ve found that bots are getting much better at getting around standard CAPTCHA where you need to recognize numbers and letters. Some programs use basic math problems for the CAPTCHA and this works a little better.
Hi Josh,
But it is an effective way of gate keeping websites. Personally, I’ll take the words any day. 
I’ve seen a few of those math CAPTCHAs on various sites. To tell you the truth, the sight of math problems make me a little shaky…I hate math.
CAPTCHA is a total pain and is puts s road block in the way of your users. I have been using this form mailer for years and it has a security feature that blocks about 99% of bot spam without CRAPCHA.
http://www.ultimateformmail.com/
Hi Jon,
I guess it just depends on your preference in the tools you use to stop spam. Many professional websites and businesses use CAPTCHA regularly in their fight against spam. I personally don’t mind it because I know why its there in the first place. For websites that are more “personal” I can see why CAPTCHA would distance you from your users.
99% is a good number to stop spam, but if a website has tens of thousands of messages each day, that would still amount to hundreds of spam that leaked through.
In any event, its good to hear that you’re winning the war against the bots.
It is advisable to keep your site spam free and in the long run with safeguards against spam would be very beneficial.
Spams take away your freedom and when you want to concentrate on your site you find yourself clearing the same old useless spam.
I have learned this through experience.
Good tips thanks for the advice