solverwp

SolverGuard Spam Shield is the only free WordPress plugin that protects every entry point of your site — contact forms, comment sections, user registrations, login page, REST API, XML-RPC, and your server itself — with zero shortcodes and zero per-form configuration required.
While most anti-spam plugins protect only one area of your site, SolverGuard deploys 30+ independent protection layers across six major modules. Install it, activate it, and your entire WordPress site is defended immediately.
<blockquote>
“Set it and forget it” protection — works automatically from the moment you activate.”
</blockquote>
<h4>🛡️ MODULE 1: Contact Form 7 Protection</h4>
Six independent spam-fighting layers apply automatically to every CF7 form on your site — no per-form setup needed.
<ul>
<li>🍯 Honeypot — An invisible hidden field is silently injected into every form. Real users never see it or fill it in. Bots that auto-fill every field get caught instantly and blocked.</li>
<li>⏱ Time-Based Check — Bots submit forms in milliseconds; humans take a few seconds to read and fill out a form. This module blocks submissions that arrive suspiciously fast (bots) or from stale, expired sessions, eliminating both automated attacks and session replay attacks.</li>
<li>🚫 IP Blocker — Block individual IP addresses or entire CIDR network ranges (e.g. <code>10.0.0.0/8</code>) from submitting any form on your site. The same block list is automatically shared with comments, login, and registration protection for maximum coverage.</li>
<li>🔤 Keyword Filter — Case-insensitive keyword and phrase matching scans every submitted form field simultaneously. Block spam phrases, competitor names, casino/pharma keywords, or any custom list of prohibited terms.</li>
<li>📈 Rate Limiter — Caps the number of form submissions per IP address within a configurable sliding time window. Stops bots that submit the same form hundreds of times per hour, without ever impacting real users.</li>
<li>🤖 Google reCAPTCHA v3 — Silent, frictionless bot scoring via Google’s reCAPTCHA v3. No annoying checkboxes or image puzzles for real visitors — the score is calculated invisibly in the background and submissions below your threshold are blocked automatically.</li>
</ul>
<h4>💬 MODULE 2: Comment Spam Protection</h4>
Ten layers of dedicated comment spam protection, covering every submission path including Gutenberg and headless REST API setups.
<ul>
<li>🍯 Comment Honeypot — A hidden anti-spam field is injected into every WordPress comment form automatically.</li>
<li>⏱ Comment Time Check — Blocks comments submitted too quickly after page load (bots) or from sessions that expired too long ago.</li>
<li>🚫 IP Blocking — Automatically reuses the shared IP block list — block an IP once, block it everywhere.</li>
<li>📈 Comment Rate Limiter — Separate per-IP rate limiting specifically for comments, independent of form rate limiting.</li>
<li>🔤 Comment Keywords — A global keyword list plus comment-specific blocked phrases. Stop spam before it reaches your moderation queue.</li>
<li>🔗 Link Count Limit — Block comments containing more than a configurable number of hyperlinks — the #1 hallmark of spam comments.</li>
<li>📧 Email Domain Blocking — Block registrations and comments from disposable or known spam email domains. Enter a list of blocked domains and all matching email addresses are automatically rejected.</li>
<li>🤖 User-Agent Filtering — Block comments from known spam bot user-agents. Optionally block requests with no user-agent header at all.</li>
<li>⏳ Hold Comments With Author URL — Automatically sends comments from authors with a URL in their display name to moderation, rather than publishing them instantly.</li>
<li>🌐 REST API Protection — All comment spam checks also apply to submissions made via the WordPress REST API (used by Gutenberg and headless/decoupled WordPress setups).</li>
</ul>
<h4>🔐 MODULE 3: Login & Brute-Force Protection</h4>
Stop hackers from guessing your password with automated brute-force attacks.
<ul>
<li>🔒 Login Rate Limiting — After a configurable number of failed login attempts from the same IP, further attempts are blocked for a configurable lockout period. Stops dictionary attacks and credential-stuffing bots cold.</li>
<li>⏱ Configurable Lockout — Set exactly how many failed attempts trigger a lockout, and how many minutes the lockout lasts. Default: 5 attempts, 15-minute lockout.</li>
<li>📋 Full Audit Logging — Every blocked login attempt is logged with the IP address, timestamp, and the reason for the block, so you can see exactly what threats your site faces.</li>
</ul>
<h4>👤 MODULE 4: Registration Spam Protection</h4>
Block fake accounts and spam bot registrations before they are ever created in your database.
<ul>
<li>🍯 Registration Honeypot — A hidden field traps bots that auto-fill every registration field.</li>
<li>⏱ Registration Time Check — Blocks registrations submitted impossibly fast or from expired form sessions.</li>
<li>📧 Email Domain Blocking — Block registrations from specific disposable email domains. Subdomain matching included — blocking <code>spammail.com</code> also blocks <code>user@sub.spammail.com</code>.</li>
<li>🔤 Username & Email Keyword Filter — Blocks registrations with prohibited words in the username or email address.</li>
<li>📈 Registration Rate Limiter — Limits the number of registration attempts per IP in a configurable period.</li>
<li>🌐 REST API & XML-RPC Coverage — Protection applies to ALL registration paths: the standard form, the WordPress REST API, and direct <code>wp_insert_user()</code> calls. Fake accounts are blocked before they are ever written to the database, which also prevents WordPress from sending notification emails for blocked registrations.</li>
</ul>
<h4>🤖 MODULE 5: Advanced Bot Protection</h4>
A dedicated bot-detection engine that runs before WordPress even fully loads — blocking malicious traffic at the earliest possible moment.
<ul>
<li>🕵️ Known Bad Bot Blacklist — 30+ built-in user-agent signatures covering scrapers (AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, MJ12bot), vulnerability scanners (Nikto, sqlmap, WPScan, Acunetix, Nessus), DDoS tools (Slowloris, LOIC), AI crawlers, and spam bots. Fully customizable with your own additional signatures.</li>
<li>🚫 Empty User-Agent Blocking — Blocks all requests with no User-Agent header — a near-universal sign of automated attack traffic.</li>
<li>🔍 Fake Googlebot / Bingbot Detection — Real Googlebots come from specific Google-owned IP ranges with verifiable reverse DNS. This module performs a live reverse DNS lookup to verify any request claiming to be Googlebot or Bingbot, and blocks fakes that don’t pass verification. Protects your server resources from being wasted on impersonators.</li>
<li>⚠️ Suspicious URL Pattern Blocking — Blocks probes for sensitive files and attack patterns including:
<ul>
<li><code>/wp-config.php</code>, <code>/.env</code>, <code>/.git/</code>, <code>/.htaccess</code> access attempts</li>
<li>Web shell uploads (<code>shell.php</code>, <code>c99.php</code>, <code>r57.php</code>)</li>
<li>Directory traversal attacks (<code>../../</code>)</li>
<li>SQL injection in URLs (<code>UNION SELECT</code>, <code>DROP TABLE</code>)</li>
<li>XML/XXE injection attempts</li>
<li>phpMyAdmin and database tool probes</li>
<li>WordPress scanner paths (<code>/wp-content/uploads/*.php</code>)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>🌊 Request Flood Protection — Sitewide per-IP rate limiting that blocks any IP sending excessive requests within a configurable time window. Stops DDoS and scraping attacks that would otherwise overload your server.</li>
<li>🔒 HTTP Method Filter — Blocks unnecessary and dangerous HTTP methods such as TRACE and CONNECT that are used by certain attack tools.</li>
<li>🛡️ Security Headers — Automatically adds five HTTP security headers to every response:
<ul>
<li><code>X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff</code></li>
<li><code>X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN</code></li>
<li><code>X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block</code></li>
<li><code>Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin</code></li>
<li><code>Permissions-Policy: geolocation=(), microphone=(), camera=()</code></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>🎭 Hide WordPress Version — Removes the WordPress version number from page source, RSS feeds, script/style URLs, and HTTP headers — making version-specific exploit scanning much harder.</li>
<li>👤 Block Author Enumeration — Blocks the <code>?author=1</code> URL trick that attackers use to discover your WordPress usernames before launching targeted brute-force attacks.</li>
<li>✏️ Custom Bot Signatures & URL Patterns — Add your own custom bot user-agent signatures and URL regex patterns directly from the admin panel.</li>
</ul>
<h4>⚙️ MODULE 6: General WordPress-Wide Protection</h4>
Site-wide hardening that protects your WordPress installation at the infrastructure level.
<ul>
<li>📡 XML-RPC Protection — Fully disable XML-RPC (a common DDoS amplification vector), or choose the surgical option: disable only the pingback methods while leaving the rest of XML-RPC available for legitimate use (e.g. mobile apps).</li>
<li>🔗 REST API Rate Limiting — Rate-limit unauthenticated REST API requests per IP to prevent API abuse by bots and scrapers.</li>
<li>🚫 REST API User Enumeration Block — Automatically blocks unauthenticated access to the <code>/wp/v2/users</code> REST endpoint, which attackers use to harvest all WordPress usernames on your site.</li>
<li>🏓 Trackback & Pingback Spam Blocking — Block all incoming trackback and pingback requests sitewide. Also removes the <code>X-Pingback</code> HTTP header and the pingback URL from your blog info to hide the endpoint from probes.</li>
<li>🔗 Comment Author URL Hold — Automatically sends any comment to moderation when the author’s display name contains a URL — a common spam technique.</li>
</ul>
<h4>📊 Spam Log & Reporting</h4>
<ul>
<li>Full Audit Log — Every blocked request is logged with the IP address, user-agent, submission data, block reason, and timestamp. Available under Anti-Spam Protection → Spam Log.</li>
<li>Filter by Module — Quickly find blocked entries by protection module (honeypot, rate limiter, bot protection, login, registration, etc.).</li>
<li>Automatic Log Cleanup — Set a log retention period in days and old entries are automatically purged. Keep your database clean without manual work.</li>
<li>One-Click Log Clear — Clear all log entries instantly from the admin panel.</li>
</ul>
<h4>✅ Why Choose SolverGuard Spam Shield?</h4>
 Feature 
 SolverGuard 
 Typical Free Plugin
 CF7 Form Protection 
 ✅ 6 layers 
 ✅ 1-2 layers
 Comment Spam Protection 
 ✅ 10 layers 
 ✅ Basic
 Login Brute-Force Protection 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Registration Spam Protection 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Advanced Bot Protection 
 ✅ 10+ checks 
 ❌ No
 XML-RPC & REST API Hardening 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Security Headers 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Hide WordPress Version 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Author Enumeration Block 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Spam Log with Auto-Cleanup 
 ✅ Yes 
 ❌ No
 Zero Configuration Required 
 ✅ Works instantly 
 ⚠️ Often requires setup
 100% Free 
 ✅ Yes 
 ✅ Yes
<h4>Works Automatically — Zero Configuration Required</h4>
All protection layers activate automatically the moment you install and activate the plugin. No shortcodes to add, no per-form configuration, no template edits. Every module can be individually toggled on or off, and all settings are accessible from a single admin page under Anti-Spam Protection → Settings.
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin optionally integrates with Google reCAPTCHA v3 for silent spam scoring on Contact Form 7 submissions. This feature is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled by the site administrator by entering their own reCAPTCHA site and secret keys.
What data is sent and when? 
When reCAPTCHA is enabled, the visitor’s reCAPTCHA response token and IP address are sent to Google’s servers at the time of a form submission.
No data is sent to Google if the reCAPTCHA module is disabled.
<ul>
<li>Service: Google reCAPTCHA v3</li>
<li>Provider: Google LLC</li>
<li>Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms</li>
<li>Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy</li>
</ul>
No other data is sent to any external service. All spam detection is performed locally on your own server.

SolverGuard Spam Shield — Anti-Spam, Bot & Login Protection

The most complete free WordPress anti-spam plugin. Protects Contact Form 7, comments, login, registration, REST API, and XML-RPC — all in one shield.

yoren

jtzl

JTZL’s Bot Maze protects your WordPress site from unwanted AI crawlers and scrapers by planting invisible trap links that only bots will follow. When a bot enters the trap maze, it gets lost in an ever-expanding maze of realistic-looking fake pages while it quietly builds a suspicion score based on its behavior.
How it works:
<ol>
<li>Trap link injection — Invisible links are added to your real pages. Legitimate visitors never see them, but bots following every link on the page will enter the trap maze.</li>
<li>Lazy maze generation — Trap pages link to more trap pages, generated on demand. The deeper a bot goes, the more time it wastes.</li>
<li>Bot scoring — Each trap page visit adds suspicion points. Deeper traversal earns bonus points. Once a threshold is reached, the visitor is flagged as a bot.</li>
<li>Blocking and tarpitting — Flagged bots can be blocked outright (403), served decoy pages (light tarpit), or slowed down with a deliberate delay (full tarpit).</li>
<li>Crawler verification — Known search engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.) are verified via reverse DNS and exempted from scoring.</li>
</ol>
Features:
<ul>
<li>Zero impact on legitimate visitors — trap links are hidden from humans and search engines</li>
<li>Configurable injection method (content, footer, or both)</li>
<li>Adjustable scoring thresholds and blocking behavior</li>
<li>robots.txt integration to signal trap paths as disallowed</li>
<li>Analytics dashboard showing bot activity, top IPs, and score distribution</li>
<li>Blocked Bots detail page showing full user agent, score, visit history</li>
<li>Optional comprehensive tracking mode to monitor blocked bot persistence</li>
<li>Automatic log retention and maintenance via WP-Cron</li>
<li>Privacy policy suggestion for GDPR compliance</li>
<li>Geographic heat map of bot activity by country with two GeoIP provider options</li>
<li>MaxMind GeoLite2 local database — all lookups on your server, GDPR-friendly (recommended)</li>
<li>ip-api.com external API — simple setup, no license key required</li>
<li>Lightweight — minimal footprint, geographic tracking is fully optional</li>
</ul>
<h3>Third-Party Services</h3>
This plugin offers optional geographic tracking with two provider options. No data is sent to any external service unless a site administrator explicitly enables one of these providers.
<h4>MaxMind GeoLite2 (Recommended)</h4>
When MaxMind GeoLite2 is selected as the GeoIP provider (Settings > Bot Maze > Geographic Tracking), the plugin downloads the GeoLite2-Country database from MaxMind and performs all IP-to-country lookups locally. No visitor data leaves your server.
<ul>
<li>What is downloaded: The GeoLite2-Country database (~60 MB), updated weekly via WP-Cron.</li>
<li>What is sent to MaxMind: Only your license key during database downloads. No visitor IP addresses are shared.</li>
<li>Requires: A free MaxMind license key from <a href="https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup" rel="nofollow ugc">maxmind.com/en/geolite2/signup</a>.</li>
<li>Service website: <a href="https://www.maxmind.com" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.maxmind.com</a></li>
<li>License: GeoLite2 databases are licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" rel="nofollow ugc">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>.</li>
<li>Terms of service: <a href="https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>ip-api.com</h4>
When ip-api.com is selected as the GeoIP provider, the plugin sends visitor IP addresses to <a href="http://ip-api.com" rel="nofollow ugc">ip-api.com</a> to resolve their country of origin. This data is used to display a geographic heat map of bot activity in the admin dashboard.
<ul>
<li>What is sent: The visitor’s IP address only, over unencrypted HTTP.</li>
<li>When it is sent: At the time a trap page visit is recorded, only while this provider is selected.</li>
<li>Service website: <a href="http://ip-api.com" rel="nofollow ugc">http://ip-api.com</a></li>
<li>Terms of service: <a href="https://ip-api.com/docs/legal" rel="nofollow ugc">https://ip-api.com/docs/legal</a></li>
<li>Privacy policy: ip-api.com does not log queries from the free API endpoint.</li>
<li>Note: The free tier only supports HTTP (not HTTPS). If your site must comply with GDPR, use the MaxMind local database option instead.</li>
</ul>
Geographic tracking is off by default and requires explicit opt-in by a site administrator.

JTZL's Bot Maze

AI bot protection through invisible trap link mazes — hidden links lure bots into a maze of fake content for detection and blocking.

SolverGuard Spam Shield — Anti-Spam, Bot & Login Protection vs JTZL's Bot Maze