Tips to prevent website spam

In this week’s Office Hours we talked about several ways you can prevent spam emails from your website.

There are several great tools- especially in WordPress- that can help prevent website spam. The value of this: making sure you don’t get frustrated and miss legitimate leads from your website.

Transcript:

I’ve had spam on my form, and what is it you’ve used?

It’s called “human presence.” I don’t know the cost because it’s included in my hosting. When I turned that on, it was like magic.

I haven’t had a Spam issue so far in moving everything to WordPress, but it’s always good to know what to do. And so I appreciate that tip. I’ll follow it over there. And, you know, if I have to dig it out like a dick doubt, your Links Page.

I also used Recaptcha on it, but that didn’t do anything. I still got a ton of spam, and it wasn’t solved until I put human presence on.

I’ve used Akismet (a WordPress product) with most form plugins to prevent spam. It has done an excellent job for me because you’re using the power of WordPress. WordPress is like 33 percent of the web- if not more. For everyone who has an automated bot submitting to a WordPress site, Akismet can quickly collect all the information, determine this is a bot, and promptly cut it off. It’s generally for comment spam, but it also works on forms. They ask for a small fee, but that small fee is worthwhile. It’s taken care of a significant amount of spam lately.

Lately, though, I’ll admit that I’m getting a lot of emails from Elon Musk about Bitcoins or some Bologna, like that. So something is bypassing the Akismet system. However, I need to look at other options. I don’t put email addresses out there because I’m afraid of spam. But I’m a liar if I’m saying I don’t get span through my forms.

Well, the main reason I do it is for user experience. Each individual business needs to weigh those two and see for them.