Spam words, specifically.
Starting yesterday, a spammer has started hitting my site with increasing frequency. While the level of hits weren’t huge, it was inconvenient, and I set about tonight stemming the flow before it got any worse. There were a few links that proved to be valuable in providing pieces to help solve this little puzzle.
This link from the WordPress support area spoke to a blacklist plugin that looks very promising.
This link, also from the support area detailed a pretty good multi-pronged defense against the spambots.
I also found some nice theory at The Developer’s Corner concerning the creation, care and feeding of spider traps.
The meat for the spider trap, though, came from Strange, Geometrical Hinges. This is good stuff!
There’s even more goodies here to combat comment spam in a variety of ways.
Am I telling what I’ve done and how? Nope. That’d make it too easy. Now, I expect that anyone who is just running scripts to infiltrate my comment-base won’t care and wouldn’t read it anyway — that’s just too much effort. But, I’d hate to tip my hand either.
Of course, in a war like this, where my bandwidth and readers (both of ’em! 🙂 ) are assaulted by porn-mongers and casino riff-raff, the stakes will only get higher. Thanks to all those out there who are helping fight the fight and bringing benefit to those of us who are a bit more casual in our attentiveness!