Tails From Provence

Have any other WordPress users been having trouble leaving comments on WordPress blogs?  There are several WP blogs where I’ve left wonderful long, meaningful comments only to have them disappear into the ether.  This has happened with both free WP blogs and customised blogs.

There are two possible reasons :

1. The blog owner sees the comments and says something like “Ah Jaysus, not Martine again” and deletes it (yes, I know most of you don’t have Irish accents, but you know what I’m trying to say!)

or, 2. My comments disappear into the Spam folder

I prefer to think that option two is the more likely reason.  Particularly when I emailed two of the owners of blogs which swallowed up my comments, they both checked their spam folders and Voilà! There were my comments!

Which leads me to another issue.  Spam.

Because my own comments were disappearing, I’ve been attempting to keep a close watch on my spam folder.  I say ‘attempting’ because this sucker was filling up overnight – I was getting 150 – 200 spam comments (I’m going to invent a word here – spamments!) a day.  If I let it go for three days? Well, I’m sorry, but the <Empty Spam> button is a lot more attractive than skimming through page after page of gobbledygook looking for one little genuine comment that might be lost in there.

I decided I had to do something about this. Most of the spamments are on old blog posts, so the simplest solution was to allow comments on all posts for just one month after the date of posting.  I did that a week ago and it’s heaven.  I’m getting maybe just one or two spamments a day now.

Bliss.  And no risk of losing any real comments there either.

If you have a WordPress blog, think about doing the same, if you haven’t already done it. And then keep an eye out for comments from me.

PS. Just googled spamment. It’s already been invented. Dammit.