WordPress’s comment system is a dream

Comment spam is a real pain in the behind. I was just comparing how WordPress captures spam and lets me look over messages and delete spam. It really is the best — by far. Just wanted to say that. Maybe I’ll do a video to show you how much better WordPress is.

One thing, though, WordPress is pretty aggressive on its spam filtering. So, it captures quite a few legitimate comment posts. I try to catch all of those and approve them, but that might be why your comments don’t immediately show up on the site. I NEVER delete posts on purpose.

Oh, while we’re talking about WordPress, lots of people are asking how I got my custom design. That’s actually a preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme). Thanks Matt, keep the good stuff coming!

Comments

  1. Alex says:

    Another little-know tip – if you found an IP address abusing you with those “tramadol direct” comments, just add the IP address to the blacklist in Options-Discussion, WordPress will automatically delete the comments from that IP.

  2. Alex says:

    Another little-know tip – if you found an IP address abusing you with those “tramadol direct” comments, just add the IP address to the blacklist in Options-Discussion, WordPress will automatically delete the comments from that IP.

  3. Robert, you really need to distinguish between “WordPress” and “WordPress.com”, as they’re two fairly different beasts.

  4. Robert, you really need to distinguish between “WordPress” and “WordPress.com”, as they’re two fairly different beasts.

  5. smp says:

    Yeah, I am looking forward to the custom theme generator/editor.

  6. smp says:

    Yeah, I am looking forward to the custom theme generator/editor.

  7. yeah, now at wordpress.com one cannot upload your own theme so you Scoble are Matt’s protege’ !

    Anyway congrats on moving to WordPress. That was one of the best things you ever done in your blogging life.

  8. yeah, now at wordpress.com one cannot upload your own theme so you Scoble are Matt’s protege’ !

    Anyway congrats on moving to WordPress. That was one of the best things you ever done in your blogging life.

  9. WordPress’s best defence against the dark arts of spam

    Scoble writes that WordPress.com has strong comment spam protection, but that it sometimes gets false positives.
    I’ve found nothing better for spam protection than WP-Hashcash, which uses Javascript to make sure it’s a human entering the …

  10. amorson says:

    Indeed WordPress’s comment handling is very well executed. After tweaking it for a while I get close to 0% false positives. I wonder if the hosted comment handling is handled differently than on the standalone application. Matt?

  11. amorson says:

    Indeed WordPress’s comment handling is very well executed. After tweaking it for a while I get close to 0% false positives. I wonder if the hosted comment handling is handled differently than on the standalone application. Matt?

  12. preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme.

    oooh i can’t wait. i figured you had some extra features being a high profile wp.com user,

  13. preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme.

    oooh i can’t wait. i figured you had some extra features being a high profile wp.com user,

  14. Cody says:

    WordPress.com sucks, but WordPress (the blogging software) is awesome. Anyone who uses WordPress.com sucks as well, because that’s basically saying you don’t give a damn about your website enough to have FULL control over it. It’s a shame, really, and you’d think someone from Microsoft (a COMPUTER company) might realize the need to have more control over software.

    Than again, Microsoft software is full of bugs anyways, so it’s not like they know what the hell they’re talking about.

  15. Cody says:

    WordPress.com sucks, but WordPress (the blogging software) is awesome. Anyone who uses WordPress.com sucks as well, because that’s basically saying you don’t give a damn about your website enough to have FULL control over it. It’s a shame, really, and you’d think someone from Microsoft (a COMPUTER company) might realize the need to have more control over software.

    Than again, Microsoft software is full of bugs anyways, so it’s not like they know what the hell they’re talking about.

  16. Jack says:

    That’s just nuts. Scoble not having full control over the backend of his website means nothing. He’s a blogger so he writes posts and he publishes them.

    I agree that you need to distinguish between WordPress and WordPress.com though. For one thing, you have the WordPress.com guys looking after you and making sure everything runs smoothly in the backend and people that choose to install WordPress on their own servers wouldn’t have that luxury.

    Not to mention some people might get the wrong idea and think you can’t even customise your theme in WP without the blessing of Matt.

  17. Jack says:

    That’s just nuts. Scoble not having full control over the backend of his website means nothing. He’s a blogger so he writes posts and he publishes them.

    I agree that you need to distinguish between WordPress and WordPress.com though. For one thing, you have the WordPress.com guys looking after you and making sure everything runs smoothly in the backend and people that choose to install WordPress on their own servers wouldn’t have that luxury.

    Not to mention some people might get the wrong idea and think you can’t even customise your theme in WP without the blessing of Matt.

  18. Matt says:

    Anyone can use the spam protection we use here at WordPress.com by using Akismet:

    http://akismet.com/

    We’re bundling a plugin for it with WP 2.0, and Akismet has an open API anyone can write applications against.

    Thanks for the comments. :)

  19. Matt says:

    Anyone can use the spam protection we use here at WordPress.com by using Akismet:

    http://akismet.com/

    We’re bundling a plugin for it with WP 2.0, and Akismet has an open API anyone can write applications against.

    Thanks for the comments. :)

  20. I am working on porting a typepad blog to wordpress and hope to donate it into an open source community. Any help on how to go about this would be appreciated.

    I have “dumped” the typepad posts and have written a script in Python to transform them into SQL statements to port them into WordPress databases. Exciting to geeks like me.

  21. I am working on porting a typepad blog to wordpress and hope to donate it into an open source community. Any help on how to go about this would be appreciated.

    I have “dumped” the typepad posts and have written a script in Python to transform them into SQL statements to port them into WordPress databases. Exciting to geeks like me.

  22. [...] Scoble が Akismet を褒めています。WordPress (+Akismet) がどんなに素晴らしいかビデオに取って見せてあげようか とまで言っています。ただし、まともなコメントを spam と誤認識することも時々あるそうです。 [...]

  23. pipit says:

    On my blog, it mark some posting as spam.
    At first, i didn’t know that. But after i check the spam (?) option, i mark it as not spam.

    Btw, Matt, please add info about spam at dashboard, so we quickly found it.

    http://pipit.wordpress.com/2005/10/21/spam-pipitwordpresscom/

  24. pipit says:

    On my blog, it mark some posting as spam.
    At first, i didn’t know that. But after i check the spam (?) option, i mark it as not spam.

    Btw, Matt, please add info about spam at dashboard, so we quickly found it.

    http://pipit.wordpress.com/2005/10/21/spam-pipitwordpresscom/

  25. By the way: I wish wordpress.com has possibility to run your own plug-ins too! I for example need captcha plugin, so apart from lack support for internet domains, this lack of possibility to upload themes, to upload plugins, makes the wordpress.com not good enough (yet) a proposition.

    but if wordpress.com will add these 3 features: upload of your own themes, … plugins, support for internet domains – then it will be indeed perfect. it is not bad that it is hosted – then it is always latest version and other people take care of the software and blogger can concentrate on content.

  26. By the way: I wish wordpress.com has possibility to run your own plug-ins too! I for example need captcha plugin, so apart from lack support for internet domains, this lack of possibility to upload themes, to upload plugins, makes the wordpress.com not good enough (yet) a proposition.

    but if wordpress.com will add these 3 features: upload of your own themes, … plugins, support for internet domains – then it will be indeed perfect. it is not bad that it is hosted – then it is always latest version and other people take care of the software and blogger can concentrate on content.

  27. Sandeep says:

    WordPress.com does not have a way of integrating Feedburner feeds as the autodiscovery feed. People subscribe to blog feeds by entering the website name .. and let autodiscovery do the rest.
    So, people migrating from other service have no way of migrating their Feedburner feeds.

  28. Sandeep says:

    WordPress.com does not have a way of integrating Feedburner feeds as the autodiscovery feed. People subscribe to blog feeds by entering the website name .. and let autodiscovery do the rest.
    So, people migrating from other service have no way of migrating their Feedburner feeds.

  29. scobleizer says:

    Cody: and they call me a technology elitist. Geesh.

  30. scobleizer says:

    Cody: and they call me a technology elitist. Geesh.

  31. bd says:

    Oh, while we’re talking about WordPress, lots of people are asking how I got my custom design. That’s actually a preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme).

    Yipee!!! Finally! :D

  32. bd says:

    Oh, while we’re talking about WordPress, lots of people are asking how I got my custom design. That’s actually a preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme).

    Yipee!!! Finally! :D

  33. Not sure if this works with WP.com, but in WP I had accidentally marked a genuine comment as Spam. I couldn’t get it back even though the comments are kept in the database. After some quick searching, I found a great plug-in called Spam Nuker from Chris J. Davis. It’s actually geared towards WP spam management but has a dual purpose of bringing back nuked comments from the db. Thought it was worth a mention. http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2005/03/03/mass-delete-15/

  34. Not sure if this works with WP.com, but in WP I had accidentally marked a genuine comment as Spam. I couldn’t get it back even though the comments are kept in the database. After some quick searching, I found a great plug-in called Spam Nuker from Chris J. Davis. It’s actually geared towards WP spam management but has a dual purpose of bringing back nuked comments from the db. Thought it was worth a mention. http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2005/03/03/mass-delete-15/

  35. [...] I wish WordPress.com had more customization options, but I presumed those would eventually come. Robert Scoble has since confirmed that with his own custom version of WordPress.com. [...]

  36. Matt says:

    Kevin, Spam Nuker is built into Akismet.

  37. Matt says:

    Kevin, Spam Nuker is built into Akismet.

  38. stealbelow says:

    I posted some thoughts on my wordpress.com blog

    http://www.payattentiontome.com

    “Wouldn’t it be great for us bloggers if when composing a post you could highlighted a name, movie, word or address you could right-click it and be given the option of linking to the relevant page (if available) on wikipedia, imdb, dictionary or google maps? Anyone?”
    http://stealbelow.wordpress.com/2005/11/25/suggestions-for-wordpresscom/

    What do you all think about that?

  39. stealbelow says:

    I posted some thoughts on my wordpress.com blog

    http://www.payattentiontome.com

    “Wouldn’t it be great for us bloggers if when composing a post you could highlighted a name, movie, word or address you could right-click it and be given the option of linking to the relevant page (if available) on wikipedia, imdb, dictionary or google maps? Anyone?”
    http://stealbelow.wordpress.com/2005/11/25/suggestions-for-wordpresscom/

    What do you all think about that?

  40. Have not quite gotten around to installing WP on my own server yet, just played around with this wordpress.com account, but does anyone know if such features like this is apparent in the WP script?

  41. Have not quite gotten around to installing WP on my own server yet, just played around with this wordpress.com account, but does anyone know if such features like this is apparent in the WP script?

  42. Suggestion for wordpress.com

    Wouldn’t it be great for us bloggers if when composing a post you could highlighted a name, movie, word or address you could right-click it and be given the option of linking to the relevant page (if available) on wikipedia, imdb, dictionary or g…

  43. [...] Scobleizer says: Oh, while we’re talking about WordPress, lots of people are asking how I got my custom design. That’s actually a preview of a new feature that’s coming to WordPress.com soon, says Matt Mullenweg (he did my custom theme). Thanks Matt, keep the good stuff coming! Great! Some of our complaints are going to be addressed. I can’t wait to put my own banner pic. Though I didn’t like this discrimination on the part of WordPress.com folks. [...]

  44. [...] I signed up for WordPress.com in order to see how the software has come along, but I think that writing could be a welcome release from the horror that is university these days. The service is a dream so far, and when the developers globally implement the customization that Scoble has, I think they’ll have everything I require. [...]

  45. [...] Enfin, ce billet de Matt et une observation de Robert Scoble nous portent à croire que certaines possibilités de personnalisation des sites pour les utilisateurs de WP.com devraient voir le jour bientôt. [...]

  46. Bill says:

    Finally i found what i’ve been looking for!! Your site! ;) Great site, folks!!
    great graphics…;)

  47. Bill says:

    Finally i found what i’ve been looking for!! Your site! ;) Great site, folks!!
    great graphics…;)

  48. Perry says:

    Just surfed on in and stayed for longer becouse of great content! Thanks!

  49. Perry says:

    Just surfed on in and stayed for longer becouse of great content! Thanks!

  50. Merry says:

    I will definitely steer my friends your way.
    ...:)