In this post, I will show you the most effective way to stop spam comments on your WordPress blog. Also, I will walk you through the process of removing links from the comment body. Everything will happen automatically and without any manual action.
WordPress is one of the most popular CMS (content management system). However, its built-in feature is not capable enough to identify & prevent spam comments.
Many website owners disable comments to prevent spammers. But this is not an efficient way of protecting your website from spam commenting.
Luckily, there are some great security plugins out there. So you don’t need to cut the head to cure headaches.
How to protect your website from spam comments?
There are a couple of ways to stop spam comments on your website and blog. Below I have explained the most effective & easiest way to prevent your website/blog from spam commenting.
1. Detect spam by an automated system
“Antispam Bee” is an incredibly powerful security plugin that will prevent spam comments in the first place. Most importantly, it will not interrupt your real readers from commenting.
Also, it will not slow down your website. It automatically detects spam comments and directly sends them to the spam folder or removes it immediately according to your choice.
Another cool thing about this plugin- it does not require any additional settings or configuration.
You can just install & activate the plugin and it will do its job precisely.
It will also send you a notification by email when it detects a spam comment. However, you have the option to make some adjustments such as whether to delete spam comments or hold for moderation, etc. Though it’s not mandatory, you can do it from its settings.
It’s a one-click configurable antispam plugin that has over 600,000 active installations with great reviews. So you can not deny it. Only with this single plugin, you can block more than 95% of spam comments.
Let’s block the rest of the 5% spammers.
2. Remove links from the comment body
The “Comment Link Remove and Other Comment Tools” plugin removes all the links from comments. It becomes very handy for preventing spammers from manual comments. Google reCAPTCHA and other human verification tools can help to prevent bot spamming.
But there are other spammers who manually write irrelative comments with bad links & awful intentions. However, this plugin will save the day.
Once you install & activate the plugin, you will find an option called “QC CLR Settings” on your WordPress Dashboard. Click on the settings and enable three features mentioned in the below screenshot:
And don’t forget to “Save Changes“. Now you are all set!
1st option: Enabling the first option “Remove WEBSITE Field from Comment Form” will remove the “Website Field” from the comment form.
If you are not sure- this is the link that makes the author’s (commenter) name a clickable link. See the two screenshots below for more clarification.
2nd option: Enabling another option “Disable turning URLs into hyper-links in comments” will turn any URLs into plain texts (that are not clickable).
3rd option: The final/third option “Remove HTML Link Tags in comments” will turn HTML links into plain text (as you see in the below example).
Lorem <a href="http://spam-website.com">anchor text</a> ipsumThe above type of HTML comment will turn into “Lorem anchor text ipsum”
Well done! Now you know how to keep your WordPress website safe from spammers.
But if you are curious to know the reasons for spam commenting, you can read further.
What is the main reason for spam comments?
Backlink: Shady people leave spam comments for getting backlinks. So they can get more visitors to their websites from your blog.
Good backlinks also help to get a higher rank on search, especially dofollow backlinks. However, all the comment backlinks are nofollow by default.
But it still has some value for generating traffic. And that is the main reason for spammers to leave spam comments.
Advertisement: It’s another reason for spam comments. This type of comment generally contains sexual product links or links from bad sites.
Sometimes this type of comment is very hard to find. Especially if they make a slightly related comment based on your topic and if they do not put any link directly to the comment body.
But if you click the author link (name of the commenter), it may redirect to an awful website that you were not ready to visit.
Now you know how to stop spam comments on WordPress and the reasons for spam commenting. Was it helpful?
How can you delete thousands of spam comments on WordPress?
Before you implemented the above spam protection system, you may already have received thousands of spam comments on your WordPress blog/website.
If you delete them one by one, this will take you forever. Luckily you don’t have to delete them this way.
To delete those spam comments quickly, select all of them and mark them as spam using the bulk option. And then go to the spam folder and click the button “Empty Spam.”
That’s it!
Conclusion
Protecting your website from spam commenting is mandatory. No matter how popular is your website or blog, the spammers will keep commenting. Even some of their comments can inject malware into your site.
But if you follow the system that I mentioned above, it will be nearly impossible to make spam comments on your website.
