Here is the thing – I am using contact form 7 and ever since my alexa rank crossed 100,000, I have been getting a lot of spam mails. I don’t know why it’s happening but that’s how it is when you are not using captcha on your contact page 🙂
Spammers are incredibly increasing by the day and I must confess that they spam everything you’ll think of online, like your comment section, your social network, you private mail and even your contact page. Aint that funny?
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I was fed up with the whole spam mail issue and to be honest with you guys, I don’t want to add another plug-in to my plugin arsenal, so I decide to simply search for a way to stop or reduce spammers from spamming my contact form without the help of a plugin.
After some good search, I finally did find a best solution from a post done by contact form 7. And today, I am going to show you too how you can easily stop receiving spam messages without using any captcha plugin.
Do You Receive Spam Messages Through Your Blog Contact Form? Stop it Using Akismet
The reason I am writing this post today, is simply because I know that many bloggers out there are also facing similar problems with their contact page and trust me, spammers do know how to get their way around the captcha you set.
Procedure,
√ Make sure that your akismet is activated and ready to work if not, learn how to activate it here
√ Make sure that your contact page is using the contact form 7 plugin
Note: I don’t know if the process I am about to show you will also work on other contact forms plug-in because I have not tested it on them yet. But you can try and give me your feedback.
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Now login to your WordPress admin panel and simply click on Contact (Located by the left menu bar)
Now we are going to be editing our contact form by adding some strings… are you ready?
Click “Edit” below the contact form 1 or any name you saved it with.
Have you done that?
Now you will see something similar to the image below.
Let’s get to work
Now, in the name field, you will see something like this [ text * your – name ], right?
Now simply add akismet:author in front of the name. It will look like this [ text * your – name akismet : author]
Now let’s move to the next step and add akismet:author_email in the field that accepts email. If you have done that, it will look like [email * your-email akismet:author_email].
Here is a screen shot of my form so you will understand better.
Note: If you are requesting for url in your contact form, you can add akismet:author_url in the field that accepts url. and you wont receive any spammy URL
Concluding part
If you have done all that, now sit back, relax and let akismet fight your spam mails for you 🙂
I tested this method for months before using it on my blog. Why I keep using it is because, it is super working well for me. Since it is working well for me, I am sure it will work brilliantly for you as well.
Let’s talk
Did i say so much about so much on this topic? Let’s make the post more fun and interesting, shall we?
Aside using the captcha, what other method are you using to fight spam messages on your webmail? Do use the comment box below to drop your lovely answer.
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Nice one there but you know askimet isn’t all that accurate in detecting spam and this might lead to some spam free post being marked as spam.
Hello Inyavic,
Many bloggers condemn akismet but to tell you the truth, i Have been using akismet from the very first day i created this blog and it has been helping me fight spam beautifully.
In life, there is no such thing as perfection and no plugin can block spam comments 100%. some good comments must always fall victim to any anti spam plugin.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment, do have a blissful week ahead…
You’re right. No plugin is 100% accurate in detecting spam. I’m not condemning Askimet but I think when it comes to mail spam, it better be left with a captcha plugin luke recaptcha. What do you think?
Inyavic, you are right. I have tried several plugins and you see one loophole or the other with them all. But one simple free plugin has helped reduce the number of spam comments on my site. The plugin is “Anti-Spam”.
It does not require any form of customization. Once you activate it, it goes to work to checkmate spam comments. It simply has inbuilt tricks that help detect potential bot generated comments and stop them. Since that was installed on my site, the spam comments dropped by over 90%. Akismet is a bit expensive and yet cannot distinguish between genuine and fake comments sometimes.
Hi Babanature,
Oh yes….it’s amazing at the amount of spam I was getting, and that was one reason why the resources were being used up, which led to the downside of my blog a few days ago, according to Hostgator. I had to use captcha and now they are much less and in control.
Makes me wonder what spammers get at the end of the day when they just spam our blogs!! I am now using akismet as well as commentluv’s gasp to fight comment spam, but I don’t get much of spam webmail, as most of the bots and spammers might already be filtered by cloud flare that I use. By using the jetpack comments form that by default routes through akismet if you’ve it installed, so the messages are checked for spam by default on my blog.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Hello Harleena,
No wonder i saw the captcha on your blog, I was really going to ask you privately why the captcha but since you’ve cleared it, i know why now 🙂
That’s nice. I have not installed jet pack because i am trying to keep my plugins to its minimal :). But it is goo that jetpack do have these feature.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment. Do have a brilliant week ahead dear friend…
Seriously, you mean you’re not using Jekpack plugin? Jetpack have lots of cool features that will greatly reduce the need for other additional plugins. Its a combination of various useful plugins for WordPress. I strongly recommend jetpack to any blogger that won’t like to have much plugin on their list.
I am just trying to put my plugins to its minimal. I don’t have much plugins on my arsenal and i intend to leave it that way.
I woulda use the jetpack but i heard it consumes resource and that is what i am afraid of 🙂
Inyavic, I know that Jetpack plugin works well and has great features including giving your site stats, connecting to social networks, etc. But what I don’t understand yet is how you can instal the contact form and add it to your “Contact us” page.
Do you have any guide on how to do that? Besides, I hope it can help receive mails without eventually limiting the number you should receive. A lot of free contact forms online limit you to certain number and then shut you out when that number is exceeded.
I also use cloudflare on my site and it helps me a lot in preventing spam on my forum. Most sites these days make use of cloudflare network for security and better optimization
Hello,
Yes indeed I’m getting lot of spam emails from contact forms or comments also. I guess I’m gonna follow your instructions.
Thanks for share
Hello Robert,
I am surely sure that this will indeed reduce the spam message you receive to it’s minimal. Do try it out and tell me how it goes.
Thanks for the comment and do have a great week for yourself 🙂
It would be easier for you if you have jetpack installed on your blog, you can use the jetpack contact form for automatic implementation of askimet in the contact form.
If you don’t, the steps above above dropped by Mr. Babanature would di just fine.
Hey babanature
Nice work my friend. I think I will also have to change my contact form (I once have the one you use, but removed it).
I just removed a spam email this morning. I do not get many, but enough to make it annoying.
And I had not thought of a way, outside of using a captcha which I hate.
So thanks again
ashley
Hello Ashley,
indeed spam comments can be frustrating if one those not take it seriously. I hate pests so i do try all what i can to get wiped out.
I’ll definitely advised that you try out this method and see how it goes.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment. Do have a beautiful week ahead…
Akismet sucks, I personally prefer using captcha or even captcha-less form with Contact Form 7 Honeypot. You might haven’t notice, but many good emails are stopped by Akismet.
Hello Kaloyan,
I do know the feelings of not liking the akismet spam plugin, but the fact is akismet is a great spam filter plugin and it has been helping me fight spam. It’s true that akismet eats good comments every once in a while, but the truth is, which spam detector doesn’t! 🙂
Using captcha is great but many people don’t like commenting on blogs that has too advanced captcha.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a good week ahead…
You know, it all depends on choice. There are many plugins out there that help fight spam. Some prefer askimet to captcha while some prefer captcha to askimet. Some even go for other plugins and/or methods. Its a matter of choice and what work best for you.
You are absolutely right. The choice of plugins is a personal decision based on likeness or hatred. One man’s meat they say, is another man’s poison.
People generally look for what would make life easy for them and their readers as well. But I would say also that decision should be based on what you have experimented and found to work real well for you. If a system works for you and you can trust it enough, there would be no need to go for others.
Yes, Akismet is an effective spam comment fighter. It should be activated by every blogger. One readily can apply this tool because of its easy access. For starters, I think this plugin is the best recommendation. Thankfully, it comes automatic with most WordPress blogs.
Sunday –
Hello Sunday,
Yes it comes with all wordpress blogs by default and to me, it is one of the best anti spam plugin out there 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment, do have a beautiful week ahead…
Hello Babanature,
I believed I was the only one who was faced with this annoying spam issue. My case was however auto spam bots which terrorized my comments with tons of spam…sometimes, up to 2000 per day!
Though I had ASKISMET installed, some genuine and non spam comments sometimes ended up in the spam folder. I therefore had to check through the whole bunch of 2000 stupid comments just to make sure I did not delete any innocent comment! And this was a daily challenge!!
I however got the answer and did a blog post 2 days ago about that.
My fear about this method you shared here is that will some of your genuine messages not end up in spam? Will you not land in the same predicament I was in before I figured out a solution for myself?
Always,
Terungwa
PS
I would really want to hear from you…how is your spam folder like?
Hello Akaahan,
ahHH… Getting 2000 spam comments per day is indeed something else and glad you have finally found a solution to the problem. and yes, i did read the post and i must say that it is lovely sharing what works for you, right?
I have been using akismet from the first day i know about wordpress and they are doing great. They have helped me fight spam comments over the years, so i see no threats coming from them :).
So far so good, it is working beautifully well with my blog.
This is how this settings work; If you are a spam and trying to send a spam message, it will not send the message instead, it will say “Failed to send your message…”. That’s how it works. any more question please don’t hesitate to ask
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your nice comment. Do have a good week ahead…
That’s the very problem, Babanature. A genuine person who is not a spammer may be labelled one (false positive). And, the sad truth is that even Google sometimes reports false positives!
The implication is that if an IP address was blacklisted and that IP belongs to a public computer, all subsequent visitors would not be able to contact you.
Got the argument?
Always,
Terungwa
I don’t man, spam everywhere, spam on our inbox, spam on facebook wall, spam everywhere, I’m telling I’m sick of spam :))
Thank God you shared this trick to stop spam. Kind regards!
Good to know that you’re also fed up of spam… Ahahah… Spammer are just so funny, i wonder if people actually click their links 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. do have a good week ahead…
Hey Babanature,
I’m not getting a lot of spam, but this is definitely something I’m going to be implementing. You always have to be prepared, especially when you start to get a lot of traffic coming to your blog. Thanks for sharing!
Most welcome Sherman,
I am sure that you’re going to love and find this post very useful. and it will surely help you fight message spams.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. do have a good week ahead.
I have done lot of thing to stop spam mail, but no result. Till date i am receiving spam mails.
Hello Vinay,
Have you tried this method? If yes! then combining it with captcha will be the best option for you.
Thanks for the comment and do have a nice week ahead….
Well, this is really handy 😉
I was using Contact 7 at first..but switched over to Jet pack after trying a few more plugins (I really didn’t want a separate plugin for these things…plus, I was going to use Jet pack anyways, for share buttons. Granted, I don’t use that feature anymore :D).
Anyways I don’t really have much problems with contact spam (I do get a few emails, but it’s not too bad). I suppose it’s because the blog is brand new (hopefully it will grow…and so does spam. Because, spam is another good measure that can be used to evaluate whether our blog is making any progress :D).
Anyways, thank you for sharing this tutorial, Babanature 🙂 Appreciate it!
Hello Jeevan,
You just made one funny but great point. Come to think of it, Spammers are one good measure to look at the growth of our blog 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and dropping your good comment. Do have a peaceful week ahead…
I guess I’m a;ready using aksimet and I’m not getting any kind of spam emails to my email. Though using of capctha also G.A.S.P are also great method to stop spam.
Although I haven’t received any spam email yet. But you increased a knowledge base of mine. I will go for it if I face such problem in future. Thanks for sharing.
You wrote a very nice post regarding spam messages. It has been big issue with every bloggers these days and I am also facing this spam flood and I have used Akismet too but still same. I keep trying spam such a spammers regularly but not able to receiving spam messages completely.
Currently i am using a default blogger contact form, But i will surly change it Coz i get too many spams in my inbox everyday…Thanks for this handy guide.
it’s becoming a huge problem for all bloggers and i appreciate that you have discussed about it here. I am new in blogging but facing this issue. Thanks for sharing here.