Image by Dae-Wang

This post has been submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.

Many people don’t think about spam protection in WordPress. They just activate Aksimet and leave it at that. But a few months ago, I found out about Defensio and decided to compare it to see how it stacked up.

Here’s how I set up the test. On a blog for a corporate client, I am using Aksimet only. That site gets a lot of traffic, though only a fraction comes to the blog. On one of my old blogs which I no longer maintain but which is still visited regularly, I am using Aksimet plus Tan Tan Noodles Simple Spam Filter. On Get Paid To Write Online, which gets thousands of visitors a month, I am using Defensio Anti Spam.

Installation And Configuration

As usual, you download and install the plugins in the plugins folder, then activate them. For both Aksimet and Defensio, you need an API Key. With Defensio, I got the API key almost as soon as I signed up for the site. With Aksimet, it can be a bit more long winded, as you have to sign up on Wordpress.com first. Once your account is approved, you need to navigate through the dashboard to find the key.

Setup is simple. For Defensio, you input your API key, set the spamminess threshold (to configure when comments will be held) and decide if you want spam comments automatically discarded on older posts. Save, and you’re done. Aksimet also allows you to automatically discard spam on posts older than a month. The Simple Spam Filter includes options for discarding spam with a certain number of links, banned words or banned patterns. In all cases, setup takes seconds.

Spam Control Settings

Both Aksimet and Defensio have their own comment management interface, allowing you to easily bulk manage spam or legitimate comments. One of the things I like in the Defensio dashboard is that you can easily sort by comment type or by spamminess, post date, or comment date.

Performance

Aksimet alone: Aksimet alone does a great job of holding back the spam so I can check it later and there have been very few occasions where it has registered false positives (comments that aren’t really spam). On the blog where it has been used alone, Aksimet has processed almost 4,500 spam comments.

Aksimet plus Simple Spam Filter: this blog has been running for longer and gets a LOT of spam. Aksimet has processed 8,831 spam comments since installation, but the Simple Spam Filter has also stopped 16,000 spam comments from even reaching Aksimet - that makes it worth having in my book.

Defensio: New kid on the block Defensio, has put in a creditable showing, blocking 1721 spam since installation a couple of months ago. However, there were 21 false negatives and 6 false positives within that period.

The Verdict

On paper, it looks like the best combination is Aksimet plus Simple Spam Filter, but is it really the case? Since I don’t keep track of spam statistics, this is only a gut feeling, but I believe that on the blog where I switched from Aksimet to Defensio, I am now seeing far less spam. The less I have to look at, the better for me, so I’ll be hanging on to Defensio on that blog at least.

Sharon Hurley Hall
Get Paid To Write Online.com

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