I’ve been plagued with spammy comments for years. I delete them, they come back and leave more. I get alerts in my inbox so usually I just go through and mark them as spam from the link in the email like a sucker.
And then Melissa at MomComm turned me on to a great plugin called WP-Ban. The plugin allows you to stop blog spam by banning specific IP addresses as well a range of IP addresses (since many spammers use the a range of the same IP). It’s a breeze to install and set up.
But first, let me explain what an IP address is. It’s a unique string of numbers that identifies the computer you’re using to access the internet. You usually won’t even see these, but it’s pretty easy to find them — just Google “find my IP address” and you’ll see what yours is. It looks similar to this: 123.45.67.890
Once you’ve installed the WP-Ban plugin you’ll need to find the IP addresses you want to ban. I suggest opening two tabs with your WordPress Dashboard open. In one tab, open your spam comments (Dashboard > Comments > Spam). In the other tab, open the WP-Ban plugin (Dashboard > Settings > Ban).
In your spam comments you’ll see something like this:
You can see the IP address in the left column. (Notice this particular offender used two separate identities to leave comments from the same IP address.) Copy that IP address and go to your tab with Ban open. Paste the IP address in the top box. Repeat as necessary, making sure each IP address is on a separate line. Make sure you save when you’re done.
You’ll probably have to keep updating this list consistently. I’m finding that while my spam has lessened, some still comes in and I just add the IP to the list. Pretty good trade off for less spam.
Another helpful post Melanie, I’d love to have this plugin once I’ve finished setting up my site. 🙂
Nice plugin. But can you please tell me is it free or not?
Yes! It’s free.
Melanie, you saved my life by posting this article. Wait i will read this post later let me install the plugin first.
I’ve been using Akismet and GASP to help keep the amount of spam down, and it works well, if I was to use WP-Ban would I need to keep using Akismet as well?
Dean, I use both Akismet and WP-Ban. Askimet does fine for most blogs, but there may come a time when you find you’re getting spam from the same IP addresses and you can deter that with the WP-B plugin.
Thanks for sharing such useful stuff. I have installed Akismet but I recieved 200 to 500 comments. As you explained the plugin, it is looking great. I am going to try this on my blog. Hope it will help. Thanks again.
I started using WP-Ban last year when I started receiving a ton of traffic from really strange places. I don’t know what was going on but I know it wasn’t authentic traffic and I could never actually find where my posts were being pinged from. However, I was able to get the IP and then ban from there. It was more than one IP. Now some people would argue why I’d want to cut my traffic but I had to consider where it was coming from first and the comments that were coming with it. Yes my traffic suffered but it wasn’t a true representation of it anyway and once I banned those IPs I was able to get a much clearer view of my stats.
Nichole, thanks for weighing in! I haven’t seen an effect on my traffic; did you see a significant drop?
I agree with you that banning the spammy IP addresses far outweighs any traffic loss. You want “sticky” traffic, not drive-by spam.
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