Spam fighting is a difficult job. Many spammers are too smart for Akismet and I was spending too much time cleaning comment spam.
Captcha-based anti-spam methods are ok but they hurt too much the usability and user experience.
Then I finally found Yawasp WordPress plugin that implements an innovative anti-spam method. It makes the comment form field names to be dynamic and to always change so spambots will have a harder time to know what field is what.
Additionally, it creates a hidden field also with a random cryptic name that must be sent empty. Smarter spambots (but not smart enough) usually send it filled because they can’t see the difference between this honeypot field to a real one.
This methods ensure a full shield against spammers without hurting usability. I simply stopped receiving spam since Sunday when I installed it. And Yawasp is reporting this about the 48 hours it is running in my blog:
Yawasp has blocked 888 birdbrained Spambots since its last activation.
♦ 856 Spambots send the default author and/or comment field.
♦ 32 Spambots send the hidden field, but filled it out.
The only drawback of Yawasp is that my WordPress theme PHP code had to be changed to activate Yawasp dynamic filed names hook. But I can deal with that. And Yawasp may also try to change your theme automatically so you don’t have to worry about that.
I recommend Yawasp to any WordPress blog owner.