It’s purely coincidental that I’m posting about WordPress here on almost a daily basis lately. Honest.

You all are probably well aware of what a captcha is. They’re one of the oldest spam deterrents around and they are also one of the more ineffective because bots have gotten smarter. However, they’re still just as inaccessible for those with various disabilities as they ever were. I can’t really speak to anything except for visual impairments, but I think my point is universal: captchas suck. Basically, they make it difficult, if not impossible for those of us incapable of “solving” them to be able to post a comment on a blog.¹ And judging from the amount of whinging my non-disabled friends make about them, they’re not much less aggravating to people who aren’t physically blocked by their presence.

This morning alone I visited not less than five separate blogs with captchas and the saddest thing was they were all WordPress sites! I admit, I’m not the biggest commenter out there and often lurk around the blogs I read, but I was all set to put fingers to keyboard on each of these blogs and I couldn’t. Yes, spam is evil and it sucks, but fighting it off shouldn’t be at the expense of your potential commenters! And there are other options out there, specifically with regard to WordPress I will say much better options. Since I’m a giver, here’s a few links to some of the ones I use on various sites of my own and/or that I maintain:

Akismet
Pros: It has remarkably good accuracy in spam detection and it learns from each individual site how to perceive spam. Also it’s actively worked on and developed by the same awesome people working on WordPress itself. Best part is, for personal websites, it’s free.
Cons: If you don’t pay attention to your settings, it’ll happily trash comments that might be legit. And while in my experience this is rare, there is the chance that you or one of your commenters could get flagged as a spammer and getting whitelisted can take some time.

Bad Behavior
Pros: It’s stops spam before it has a chance to flood your spam folder. And it’s been actively developed since before Akismet first came on the scene. (In fact, I’ve been running it on my website since it first became available.)
Cons: I’ve heard of reports where people have installed it and then found themselves unable to access their own websites. (Personally, the only time I’ve experienced any trouble with it was a few years back when the plugin writer accidentally set the wrong blacklist in the code and inadvertently blocked every user of the plugin!)

GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin (G.A.S.P.)
Pros: None of the drawbacks of Akismet or Bad Behavior potentially thinking you or other legit commenters are spammers. And you probably won’t have to edit your theme files to get it working. (Also, if you’re like me, you can leave snarky error messages for people who don’t read the rules and forget to check the box.)
Cons: It won’t stop persistent bots from sucking up bandwidth while they keep trying to get through your comment form. Also, it doesn’t stop trackback spam — unless you don’t allow any trackbacks — but there is a plugin for that.

CloudFlare
Pros: It basically does all the security work before anything hits your website, so you don’t waste precious bandwidth on evil spam.
Cons: It’s a paid service, though, they are partnered with a ton of web hosting companies to offer free/discounted services.

I’m personally a fan of the Akismet and Bad Behavior combination and have been using it on my website since 2007 with absolutely zero issues. I also heartily recommend CloudFlare and I would actively use it on my own website if it didn’t screw up the redirects I have in place . . . and also I’m not particularly fond of the fact that it forces the www² in the URL. But CloudFlare not only secures your site, your account gives you access to all kinds of additional apps like automatic daily backups and file monitoring.

And while they come with their own set of pros and cons, it is worth mentioning that both IntenseDebate and Disqus have built in spam filters and don’t use captchas. Sortakinda win?

1. Or whatever area of your website is being “protected” by captcha.
2. At the very least it’s redundant, if not depreciated.