Comments on: Defensio Launches – a Competitor for Akismet

By: 66tx

66tx — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:28:58 +0000

It’s the Daddy of comment spam plugins!

By: BillinDetroit

BillinDetroit — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:58:49 +0000

@Omar … no single method exists that will block all spam … not even hiring overly sensitive people with short tempers to moderate.

Even if you cascade Captcha / Akismet / Defensio / irritable people — if you get enough spam, some will get through. I don’t expect perfection; I’m just looking for a good signal to noise ratio.

By: Joyce Babu

Joyce Babu — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:58:10 +0000

I have been a beta tester for Defensio. When there is a lot of spam, Defensio is extremely powerful (much powerful than Akismet). I applied for Defensio when the number of spam comments on my blog shot up suddenly. But it decreased with the same speed it rose and now there in no more spam trouble. But now Defensio is catching some of legit comments too (my blog is not a heavily commented blog). Overall, I am much more satisfied with Defensio than Akismet.

By: Random Seo

Random Seo — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:06:14 +0000

I agree with Anne- the name does sound a bit Harry Potterish. In fact, it even inspired a little fanfic that I’ve written on my site using defensio as a magical spell, something like Imperio and Crucio in the series by JK. Do feel free to read it ( it would be better if you have some knowledge about the Potter series)

Akismet has proved to be extremely competent- I’ve never seen a reason to switch.

Any ways, good luck to the Defensio guys.

By: Karl-Heinz Wenzlaff

Karl-Heinz Wenzlaff — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:57:59 +0000

Thats the thing I do with any new blog for my customers: Removig akismet from the wp-plugin dir and uploading spam karma. It works a very reliable way.

By: Angela Wills

Angela Wills — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:54:51 +0000

I always use Spam Karma as well and have never had a problem with it catching the wrong spam comments… I found it to be better than akismet.

By: Mat

Mat — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:57:08 +0000

@dan – we’ve built a Defensio WordPress plug-in, so you simply download and install it to WP like you would any other plug-in!

@brian – no, unfortunately, that would not be a very good use case. defensio has been designed to handle your entire spam burden for optimal performance

thanks darren, and to the whole community here for the feedback!

By: Brian Purkiss

Brian Purkiss — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:26:20 +0000

lol
it is good to see some healthy competition!

I hope their competition means the end of spam!

Hm…
I wonder if you could run them both at the same time…

By: Jamie Harrop

Jamie Harrop — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:10:31 +0000

@ Omar… unfortunately, more and more spam bots are able to get past captcha forms without any trouble. To show that, I was using a captcha method on the signup form of a popular forum that I manage. Each day, I was getting about ten signups from automated spam bots that were easily getting past the captcha form.

By: John Lockwood

John Lockwood — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:26:20 +0000

I always use Spam Karma 2 with the moderate plugin installed. It works well for me except for a trickle of trackback spam, which htaccess takes care of rather nicely. And unlike Defensio, you can’t beat the price.

By: Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:58:50 +0000

What is the integration with Defensio and Wordpress? None because they are competitors?

By: Bitten

Bitten — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:54:07 +0000

Yay, it’s for textpattern too. Although the txp version of Defensio isn’t ready yet.

By: Rhys

Rhys — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:53:13 +0000

I’m a happy user of Akismet and Bad Behaviour, but the problem I am having is that my server host is beginning to complain as the amount of time wp-comments.php get requested, most of them by spammers.

Any suggestions with dealing with it, as I don’t get that many hits to justify an upgrade?

By: Jared Schwager

Jared Schwager — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:40:49 +0000

I’ve been using Defensio for about a month now and I really like it. My favorite part about it is the different percentages of spaminess for each comment.

By: Omar Yesid Mariño

Omar Yesid Mariño — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:00:16 +0000

Honestyly, I don’t understand what is the advantage of a anti-span system like those, if I have a catcha system (letters and numbers in a graphic for human validation). Is it not enought?

By: MillionDollarJourney

MillionDollarJourney — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:36:03 +0000

Darren, if you like Akismet, you should give Spam Karma 2 a try. For me, it was far superior than Akismet.

By: Mike - Twenty Steps

Mike - Twenty Steps — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:27:49 +0000

I am amazed that nobody has mentioned Spam Karma. It's the Daddy of comment spam plugins! And no. I'm not connected with the developers. I just happen to love the plugin :)

By: Alfredo

Alfredo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:22:41 +0000

two anti-spam heads are better than one

By: David at free Christian resources

David at free Christian resources — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:08:16 +0000

This is really good news for all of us bloggers. Askimet is great but there is nothing but a bit of competition to make people up their game even more!

I have also had a couple of comments get classified as spam with Askimet – but the amount it has stopped is huge in comparison.

By: Caroline Middlebrook

Caroline Middlebrook — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:55:25 +0000

@Jamie, same here – for me Askimet very rarely lets spam through yet I usually have to fish out at least one genuine comment. I label them as ‘not spam’ but they keep getting put in there. I think some of my commenters have somehow managed to get their IP addresses on some kind of blacklist.