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interaction with an online form such as a registration or contact form. It works brilliantly in WordPress to prevent automatic posting of spam using spam-bots. It is very configurable and registered users, which may just mean you, can be excluded. You will be required to private public and private keys which can quickly be obtained from the reCaptcha website. Once this is added, anyone adding a comment will be rqeuired to enter the phrase that the reCaptcha engine displays below the comment. Of course, span-bots can;t read! It's all very simple and effective.

An added benefit of this plugin is that it includes an additional optional feature called MailHide which hides or partially hides any email addresses in your blog. This prevents another form of bot which harvests emails from websites and then uses those emails to send spam. So you are not only protecting yourself but also others.

SPAM IN CONTACT FORMS

Another source of spam is via a contact form. You can easily add a contact form to your WordPress blog. This can, however, be an open door to spammers . These spammers will search the blogosphere for comment forms and use them to send you spam or abuse or both. This is often carried out by the spam-bots already mentioned, these are software programmers that hunt for forms and use them to send spam, viruses and the like.

As with comment spam, you can use a plugin that uses "human-ness" in the form of the reCaptcha method.

There is a very useful WordPress plugin which allows you to add a customised contact form to your blog and include a reCaptcha phrase. This WordPress plugin is called Dagon Design Form Mailer which is a bit of a mouthful but it works very well.

IN CONCLUSION

Spam can be a nuisance when blogging with WordPress but if you use effective spam blocking it is a very satisfying feeling to know you have defeated the enemy'.

USEFUL LINKS

Akismet website: http://akismet.com/

Dagon Design Form Mailer: http://www.dagondesign.com/art icles/secure-form-mailer-plugi n-for-wordpress/

Learn more about this author, Ray Cook.
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