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It finally happened — the attempted spam comments to this blog outnumbered my actual readers yesterday. But instead of getting me depressed, it made me even more grateful to Dr. Dave and Spam Karma. Not much gets through with Spam Karma’s vigilance.

Of course, I upgraded my settings a while ago — now I feel like Zena, warrior princess:

My top two tips for keeping spam under control are:

1. Get help.
   Even Zena had a sidekick. If you’ve got WordPress, you have the option of adding some tough spam busters, such as Spam Karma, Bad Behavior and Akismet. There’s great information on the WordPress Codex site about combating comment spam. And here are links to a list of anti-spam plugins for Typepad users, and a comprehensive Six Apart article on comment spam.
2. Close off comments for older posts.
   I finally realized that 90% of the attempted spam was targeting one post from April on Judy’s Book. I have no idea why that one. So I’ve finally closed it off. None of the comment spam for that post has ever made it past Spam Karma, because one factor SK considers in determining if a comment is spam is the age of the post. But maybe now they’ll stop trying on that post, at least.
3. Bonus suggestion: tweak your settings.
   If spam is getting through your spam filters, check out what the default settings are, and experiment. Make them tougher, and see if that helps. Remember to closely monitor your caught spam for a while, to make sure you’re not being too tough and missing legitimate comments. It’s worth being a “total beeeatch” sometimes.