Bloggers' Paradise

jacquie · Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 12:13 am Post subject: How to stop undesirable comments

I think a big part of the fun of blogging is leaving and getting comments and it is a shame that they can be exploited.

But there are a couple of different things you can do that allow people to comment but ensure spam is minimised.

This applies particularly to Blogger, but there are similar settings in Typepad.

First find the page that controls comments under the 'Settings' tab .

on that page near the top it gives several options for who you will accept comments from. Please set this to 'Anyone' - I am not a regular Blogger user and much prefer to leave my Typepad address and if you do the next things it will protect you from undesirables.

At the bottom of the page there are some buttons the ones we are interested in are

Enable comment moderation? and Show word verification for comments?

Selecting Yes on the first of these will email you (fill in your email address field when it pops up) to let you know a comment has arrived and you have the option to accept or reject it.

Selecting Yes on the second makes commenters copy some machine unreadable letters and numbers into a box. This will protect you against automatic 'spambots' and ensure only humans can comment?

Finally click on the 'save settings' button to get it set up.

If anything undesirable still gets through then it is easy to edit or delete comments on the 'Moderate Comments' page under the 'Post' tab.

_________________
Jacquie

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