Unless you’ve been actively running a blog for a while, you probably haven’t run into this. Spam is a term generally applied to unsolicited, unrequested emails. Those aren’t done one at a time by a person, except when someone posts an unrelated commerical-type email to multiple mailing lists or discussion boards. Typically, the spammer uses a program to send the same message to thousands of people, hoping even a few will click the links it contains, so the spammer can be paid.

This has also become somewhat common on blogs and wikis. They find a blog post to comment on or a wiki to alter, and add a message containing links (to websites they’ll be paid something for if you visit). Sometimes it’s dozens of links in the one posting, other times (especially if the spammer is trying to be cautious) just a couple.

I’ve been using WordPress for my blogs since early Spring 2005. It’s very flexible and customizable and easy to work with. Another nice feature is that it can require approval from me for comments that are posted containing more than a set number of links. Instead of getting comments left with tons of links to online gambling sites, for instance, I’ve gotten an email from “myself” asking me to approve or delete the coment. I don’t have to go looking for comments that are unrelated and link ridden, and I don’t have to monitor every single comment if I don’t want to. And still it will catch practically all blog spam.

If you have your own website that can use PHP or MySQL, you can probably use WordPress. If you don’t have a site like that, check out WordPress’s list of hosts. Having someone host your own quality website can cost as little as $6.95 a month. I’m not sure if any of the free ones would allow you to set up WordPress on the site, but for around $7 you can do quite a lot with your own website, from running a quality blog to selling things you’ve made. For $7.95 a month you can use DreamHost to do even more. That’s what I use for all my web needs any more.

Anyway, if you find yourself struggling with getting blog spam, find a program like WordPress that can readily handle it for you.

Currently watching: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Mitchell