Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam

Stop a lot of spambots from polluting your site by making visitors identify a random word displayed as an image before commenting and optionally before registering. You can customize the pool of words to display.

Features

• Toggle whether registered users need to enter the word

• Random font display

• No cookies required

• No JavaScript required

• Auto-generated audio for visually impaired users

• Easy-to-read

• No mapping of words from the code — words are used once or removed after 24 hours

• Reminder of what was entered if you get the word wrong

• Selective blocking of trackbacks, pingbacks

• Easy to translate

• Compatible with caching plugins

Negatives

• Purposely no obscuring techniques so that the anti-spam word is easy to read

• The more people who use this plugin, the more motivation for spambots to target it

Requirements

• GD Library and FreeType Library (There’s a diagnostic page to tell you whether you have them installed. If needed, just ask your web host to install them!)

• WordPress 3.2 or higher

Translations

• ru_RU translation by koc
• sk_SK translation by Patrik Žec (PATWIST) of http://patwist.com

Unzip all files to the folder custom-anti-spam in your plugins directory, so that the path is wp-content/plugins/custom-anti-spam/. Then activate the plugin via your WordPress admin section. The plugin should work directly “out of the box”, but all settings can be customized in the Settings > Custom anti-spam page in your WordPress control panel. If you are upgrading from a previous release, de-activate that release first.

Please visit the plugin page at https://www.theblog.ca/anti-spam with any questions.

3.2.4

• 2024-12-16: Fix CSRF vulnerability on register

3.2.3

• 2023-08-30: Fix back-end XSS vulnerability

3.2.2

• 2014-02-08: Minor code cleanup (thanks koc!)

3.2.1

• 2013-10-07: Support PHP 5 static function calls, bumping WordPress requirement to 3.2+.

3.2.0

• 2013-03-30: Add dynamic anti-spam field name. Also: standardize translation and upgrade process.