How to Use Antispam Bee Plugin to Prevent Spam Comments in WordPress
Spamming comments and contents are the underbelly of the world of the internet. When you are using a website and creating content, you will cross paths with spam sooner or later.
Spamming takes a toll on your website. It is unpleasant, unnecessary but there is much we can do to avoid being at the receiving end of the spams. However, like a silver lining of a cloud there are also tools that can help you to keep your website safe from getting spammed.
The one way to get rid of spam comments is to go through all the comments and approve or delete comments manually. But it will take a lot of time and is not feasible when you have a lot of blogs and comments. But there are tools that will make the task easy for you.
Today we will discuss one such tool. The Antispam Bee plugin is a very effective tool that can work as a blessing to help you deal with spamming comments on your website.
In the following, we will discuss how you can use this free plugin to prevent spam comments in WordPress. Before going into the details, we will shed light on why in the first place we should consider blocking or deleting spam comments. Check out the reasons to block or delete spam comments.
3 Reasons to Block Spam Comments
- Take up space on your hosting: When there is spam comments on your blog posts, it takes up the space in your website hosting. If these comments remain undeleted then it will eventually reduce the available spaces you have on your hosting. Thus to ensure spam comments are not taking up much space on your website hosting, it is better to delete those comments.
- Harms the credibility of your brand: If you cannot differentiate between spam comments and approve them on your blog, then it will lower the credibility of the brand. Therefore, it is important to figure out which comments are spam and take action against those comments. Otherwise it will harm your brand in the long run.
- Risky for your website visitors: If spam comments get approved on your blog and somehow the visitors clicks on a few of the spam links, then it might be harmful for your visitors. If they experience something unpleasant, they will think twice before visiting your website anytime soon. That is why it is important to ensure that you are not approving spam comments and dealing with them in the appropriate manner.
Now, as we have the basic understanding of how spam comments are no good for us, let’s get into the details of using Antispam Bee to prevent spam comments in WordPress. Fasten your seatbelt, because you will get to know how this plugin can be considered as the best anti spam plugin WordPress in 2022.
How to Use Antispam Bee to Block Spam Comments
In order to get started with the Antispam Bee plugin, the first step is to install and activate the plugin. In order to know how you can install a plugin on your WordPress website, check out the step by step guide here. After the theme is installed and activated, you will have to configure the settings of the plugin.
To configure Antispam Bee, you will have to log in to your WordPress dashboard. In the menu located at the right side of your screen, look for the “Settings” option. Once you find it, click “Settings > Antispam Bee” to go to the admin panel of the plugin.
Once you navigate to the admin panel, you will find that the Antispam Bee settings is divided into 3 different major options. You can put your necessary settings to set up this WordPress anti spam plugin:
- Antispam Filter
- Advanced Tools
- More Options
In the following, we will discuss the functionality of each of these options and how to use these to block or delete spam comments on your WordPress website. Knowing the details is important to configure Antispam Bee.
Antispam Filter
In the Antispam Filter settings, there are specific tools that can be used to find out spam comments on your website.
With the different options within this tool, you can filter and review comments of your blog before they are visible on your blog posts.
The Antispam Filter settings have few tools that can be useful for detecting the spam comments. In the following we are elaborating the functionality of each of the options.
Trust Approved Commenters
The implication of the trust approved comments option is to automatically approve comments from frequent, trustworthy and regular commenters.
The commenters who often post with valuable comments will get their comments automatically approved. You will not have to go through the comments and approve them manually.
The plugin will track the regular commenters and auto-approve their comments on the blog. This option can be very useful to harness the important members of the community.
If you look at the antispam bee reviews, you can see a positive response towards this specific feature.
Trust Commenters with a Gravatar
Trust commenters with a Gravatar setting are somewhat similar to the previous one. As an additional feature, this option will approve comments of users that have a specific Gravatar image.
The plugin has the capability to recall the Gravatar of specified commenters and will approve their comments automatically.
Consider the Comment Time
You can also approve or block comments based on the time they are commenting. Even though the plugin has this option but enabling this might have some downfall too. As timing cannot be the only variable to decide spam comments.
Along with that, the author of this WordPress anti spam plugin did not recommend using this setting if your website is using page caching.
BBCode is Spam
With this setting, the plugin checks the comments with BBCode (Bulletin Board Code). By checking it with BBCode, the plugin marks links as spam.
Spammers use specific words and links in their comment, this setting will check the comments and block comments that have such links. Using this feature is recommended to ensure the plugin blocks links that are spam.
Validate the IP Address of Commenters
This feature of the plugin will facilitate you to verify the IP addresses of the commentators. This feature will track and record the IP address of the commenters. If their comments are useful, the plugin will treat their comments accordingly. And if the comments are spam, then the plugin will take adequate action against the comments to block or prevent them from being on the website.
Use Regular Expressions
The regular expressions feature has a set of patterns that are usually used to track spam. If this option is checked, the plugin will cross match comments with the regular expressions of spam and based on that they will block the comments from appearing on your website.
In many antispam bee reviews, the synopsis refers to getting very good results from using this tool to block spam comments on the website.
Look in the Local Spam Database
If this option is checked, the plugin will dig deep into the database of your website. It will look for spam comments that have been made previously. After that, it will keep a record of the previous comments and treat the future comments based on that record.
So even if your website already has spam comments, this plugin will record them and save your website from getting spammed with such comments in future.
Use a Public Antispam Database
This specific feature is connected with the Stop Forum Spam. This allows the plugin to identify IP addresses of spammers and do a history check of the commenters.
As the feature requires frill IP address of the commenters so individuals belonging to the EU countries will not fall under this feature. This feature is also recommended to be checked to ensure active spammers are not getting into your website to post spam comments.
Block Comments from Specific Countries
This option will allow you to block comments coming from specific countries. In addition, if you do not want users from any specific country to interact with your blog at all, this feature can come handy to you. The feature includes a black list and white list ISO codes. You can block comments from specific countries just by putting the country codes within the list. After the countries are added, individuals from those countries will not be able to comment on your website.
Allow Comments only in Certain Language
This WordPress anti spam plugin allows users to select specific languages that commenters can use. You can select only one language for the comment and rest of the languages will not appear on your website or blog. This feature can be helpful if your blog caters to an audience of specific language.
These are the overall options that are present in the Antispam Filter. These are the different layers of filters and options that you can integrate in order to filter out spam comments on your website. With the help of these filters, your website will be safe from spam comments. You can handpick specific filters and use them on your website as per your requirement to configure Antispam Bee.
Advanced Tools
With the help of the advanced tools, you can easily manage, block and delete spam comments on your website. There are few settings within the advanced tools that are default. However, you can also bring necessary changes in a few of the options. In the following we will elaborate on the options that you can tweak in order to ensure better protection against spam.
Mark as Spam, do not Delete
If you want more control over the comments, you can keep this option checked. If you keep this option checked, the plugin will only mark the comments as spam and will not delete them. You can later have a look at the comments and pick which one to delete or keep.
Spam-Notification by Email
By checking this feature, you can get email notification whenever a spam comment is made on your website. But this is not recommended because down the line it will create nothing but irritation for you. However, the plugin does keep this option available if anyone wants to use it. Majority of antispam bee reviews indicated to not use this feature.
Do not Save the Spam Reason
If this option is checked then the plugin will not save the suspicious values of a comment in a different column. Formatted links, comment time and more items can be considered as suspicious values.
Delete Existing Spam After X Days
If you use this setting, you can specify the lifespan of spam comments. It will allow you to select the number of days the plugin will take to delete the spam comments. So, if you pick to delete the spam comments within 1 day of the comment, the comments that are marked as spam will be automatically deleted after 1 day. It can be integrated with the other options that come with the plugin too. This WordPress anti spam plugin has most of the tools to make your life easier.
Limit Approval to Comments/Pings
With this feature, you have the freedom to either approve comments or trackbacks. If any limitation is imposed on approval top comments, it will automatically delete the trackbacks and vice versa. If this option is not selected, the plugin will follow the previous setting.
Delete Comments by Spam Reasons
This feature enables you to choose multiple reasons from a set of options that can be regarded as spam. So when a comment is made that matches with the spam reasons you have selected, the comments will be marked as spam and hence will be automatically deleted. You can use this tool if a specific spam reason is applied on your posts or website.
These are the overall elements of the advanced settings that you can use to create a healthy checkup system in your website to protect it from spam comments. In the following we will look into more options that you can avail with the help of this awesomely helpful plugin.
More Options
The more option section allows you to pick what sort of information you will be requiring regarding the spam updates on your website. The plugin generates reports that will give you a clear idea about the spam comments. You can monitor the spam updates better, compare between the rates of useful and spam comments and more. Checking these elements is important to finish configuring Antispam Bee. The “More Option” features offers the following:
Generate Statistics as A Dashboard Widget
If you check on this option, it will use an interactive widget to display the information of the spam report. This widget will be visible in your WordPress admin dashboard panel. The widget will give you an overall update regarding the spam comments of your blog. We recommend using this tool because it will paint a clear picture and give you an idea on the overview of the spam updates. The antispam bee reviews indicate the overall presentation of the widget is very easy to understand.
Spam Counter on the Dashboard
If you want real time updates of the spam comments on your website, you can keep this option checked. This will show a real time update of spam comments on your blog. If you delete comments from your blog it will also show the number of comments you have deleted. This spam counter will be visible in your WordPress dashboard panel as well.
Do not Check Trackbacks / Pingbacks
If you want to auto approve all your trackbacks and pingbacks, you can put a check on this option. Then it will not check on the trackbacks and pingbacks and will automatically approve them. However, by default the plugin does check all the trackbacks and pingbacks.
Comment form Used Outside of Posts
Once you have selected and checked the necessary settings, you can click on the save changes button and these updates will be applied on the theme. It will start functioning right away.
These are the settings you can select and pick for setting up the plugin to get started. If you need any support while you are at it, you can get information from the support forums on wordpress.org very easily. Because of the overall features of this plugin, it can be considered as one of the best anti spam plugins in WordPress.
After you have this plugin set with the necessary settings, your website will be ready to deal with spam comments and provide a better experience to you as well as your visitors. This plugin is very helpful and widely used. It has a resounding 500,000+ active installation and a whopping 5 star rating to flex the efficiency of the plugin to be one of the best ant spam plugins in WordPress.
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