Block Annoying Spammers from Commenting on Your WordPress Site

Spammers are some of the worst scum in cyberspace. I’m not even sure they are human. It’s almost as if spammers are the mutant offspring of the direct mail marketers that keep piling up our landfills with crap no one even wants to see.

However, they can be stopped. You just have to be diligent in your efforts. Most spammers tend to lurk in the same murky corners, using pay-per-use internet hotspots or anonymous proxy servers to fling their slime. As you block each one, the spammers will eventually run out of outlets and will move on to easier blogs to prey on.

In WordPress, navigate to Settings -> Discussion and scroll down the page to the area labeled “Comment Blacklist.” In this box you will enter any words or IP addresses that you want to blacklist (or block) from commenting. Be careful what words you enter as it also matches inside words. For example, if you entered “net” as a blacklisted term, comments containing “internet,” “network,” and “netting” would all be blocked.

To build your list of IPs to block, go to Comments in WordPress. Now create a new document in your favorite text editor. Copy and paste all of the IP addresses that are associated with spam comments into your new document (one IP per line). When you have copied over the IPs for each spam comment, copy and paste all of them to the Comment Blacklist box under Settings -> Discussion and hit the Save Changes button.

Save the text file and continue to add new IPs to it as more spam is posted. Use the file as your master blacklist. The great thing is that you only have to make this list once and then you can use it on each of your WordPress blogs.

Good luck in your battle against the bastards of spam. This won’t keep them off your site, but at least it’ll stop them from commenting. For God and Country!