This is the project page for the upcoming WordPress plugin that I’m developing. The goal is to be an all-in-one guardian against comment spam and e-mail harvesters. Planned features include:
- Looking up commenters in multiple DNSBLs
- Currently support Tornevall and Project Honey Pot
- Add hidden links in posts and pages to honey pots
- Obfuscate e-mail addresses to thwart harvesters
- Remove e-mail addresses altogether when viewed by known harvesters
All of these features will be independently controlled, meaning you can choose to enable only those that you want to use. And of course this isn’t the end-all-be-all feature list – this is just what I want to have in place for release.
Show your support for this plugin by donating a little something. While there’s no practical difference in where the money goes whether you use this button or the one on the right (the money is used to help offset the costs of hosting this site), using this button will show me your support for this plugin in particular, not just the site in general.
Current Development Status: Alpha
The current status of the plugin is Alpha. This means it is not yet ready for public consumption, even for testing. Status of individual components:
- DNSBL integration
- Functional integration with Tornevall and Project Honey Pot is complete.
- Currently the Project Honey Pot integration uses my hard-coded API key; this must be configurable before public release.
- Hidden honeypot links
- This is functionally complete.
- Currently my own honey pot is soft-coded into the plugin; this will be configurable before general release, but will not block a public beta.
- E-mail obfuscation
- Work has not yet begun.
The following must be completed before Public Beta:
- Project Honey Pot API key must be configurable.
- E-mail obfuscation must be implemented.
The next stage after Public Beta will be the general release of Version 1. The following will be completed by then:
- Configuration pages will allow all features to be independently enabled or disabled.
- The honey pot URL will be user-configurable.
Something wrong with Akismet?
Lots of junk slips past Akismet that this thing does indeed catch. I don’t know the exact mechanism Akismet uses to determine what is and what is not spam, but whatever it is the spammers have figured out how to defeat it. Using the DNSBLs, however, I can simply weed out the bad guys before they even post, which opens up other avenues — such as hiding things like e-mail addresses entirely from them. The honey pot integration is another perk, and helps to identify any spambots out there that haven’t been caught yet.
So, while we’re waiting for Kromey’s Spamguard to reach Beta, what’s the next best thing for people too cheap to use Akismet?