9 1/2 Weeks - Mollom Hot For Spam Bots

Posted September 13th, 2008 by Richard Dewick in

Drupal

Spam is a huge problem for anyone running a blog but after 9 ½ weeks of using Mollom I'm hot under the collar for this great looking software!

Mollom is great for stopping unwanted content from being published on your website. I use it for my comments and contact form but you could use it for blog posts, registration forms you name it.

Mollom is really hot on spam bots and since activating it I've saved so much time, instead of moderating all my comments I let Mollom do the work for me. It's by no means perfect but it sure does stop a lot of spam getting through.

I was inspired both to try Mollom on my Drupal (plugins for Wordpress and Joomla available) site in the first place, and then to write this piece, by Wim Mostrey's Mollom: 128 Days Later article.

How Does it Work?

If a user posts a comment or other content to your site, your web server sends it to Mollom to be checked. Mollom says whether it thinks the content is spam or not and gives it a quality score. Your web server then accepts or rejects the post depending on quality standards that you set.

They broke every rule!

Those pesky spam bots keep on chucking out spam and Mollom keeps on killing them. Here's a graph for my site over the last 9 ½ weeks:

Mollom Graph

I'm not sure 2 million attempts have been blocked but just looking at my logs I know it's saved me at least 30 minutes a day having to moderate comments on my blog.

Mollom is no Kim Basinger but it sure is hot for spam bots!

Richard Dewick's blog

Thanks for sharing

On September 14th, 2008 Arnold - Mr.Gadget said:

Must look at implementing this on my blog too sometime!

Great plugin for your blog

On September 14th, 2008 Richard Dewick said:

Cheers Arnold, it's definitely worth testing, I for one can vouch for it :)

How does it compare with others

On September 14th, 2008 Barry Welford said:

The standard approach for many Wordpress users is to use Akismet, which I find does an excellent job. For e-mail, I use K9 which also performs well. I wonder how Mollom compares with these other well-known alternatives. It's always good to have choices. That makes sure there is continuing improvement.

Mollom, Akismet and Defensio

On September 15th, 2008 Richard Dewick said:

As far as I know Barry it works in the same way but:

"Mollom does offer some of the same features as Akismet or Defensio, but our goal goes further than spam-blocking alone. We want to increase the overall quality of your site's content. For example, Mollom's CAPTCHA service already helps block fake user accounts, and we are experimenting with various automated content-quality assessments, including blocking obscene, violent and profane content."

If you've tried the alternatives do comment and let us know of your findings, good or bad.