Akismet is a great tool for fighting spam, however due to licensing and call limits I was looking to decrease the number of calls to Akismet. In my search for alternatives I stumbled upon Stop Forum Spam. For a free project, I have been impressed with their accuracy. While primary focused on, well forums, they have an API.

Other alternatives exist but for now I have been happy with the combination of Aksimet and Stop Form Spam combined with judicial word and IP blocks when needed.

Spam Strategy

While my exact spam strategy is somewhat depending on the content type. I often use a PHP library for Akismet in combination with a word block and/or IP block list.

For my most recent project the strategy looked like this:

• First check the input against an IP list. While IP blocks are a cat and mouse game, I use it to block known spammers. I’m talking about IPs that have made more than five known spam attempts in the last fourteen days get blocked for two weeks.
• Next, check the content against a known word block list. Again this is the low hanging fruit for the crypto and link spammers who often uses the same words or phrases in their spam.
• Once content passes both of those, the data is checked against the Stop Forum Spam database.
• Finally, if that passes, then check the content with Akismet.

I found this catches about 98% of spam. All entries require manual approval, but catching spam means less moderation.

PHP Example code

Here is an example using the Stop Forum Spam API with Symfony HTTP Client. A similar method should be possible with any Request package. For Akismet I’m using the Omines Akismet Package as I can use the same Request package.

One quirk of the API is that the blocklists sets the frequency field to 255, and the lastseen date to the current time (UTC). I am being somewhat conservative here and checking if the lastseen is within the last hour.

/**
     * Check IP / email / username against Stop ForumSpam database
     *
     * @param string | null $ip IP address to check
     * @param string | null $email Email to check
     * @param string | null $username Username to check
     * @param int $threshold Confidence threshold(0 - 100, default: 75)
     * @param bool $checkTor include TOR exit nodes in spam detection(default: false)
     * @param bool $checkBlacklist include blacklisted entries(default: true)
     * @return bool | string false if clean, or string with reason if spam detected('confidence' | 'tor' | 'blacklist') {
     */
    private static function stopForumSpamLookup($ip = null, $email = null, $username = null, $threshold = 75, $checkTor = true, $checkBlacklist = true)
    {
        $client = HttpClient::create();

        $params = ['json' => '1', 'confidence' => '1'];

        if ($checkTor) {
            $params['badtorexit'] = '1';
        }
        if ($checkBlacklist) {
            $params['nobaduser'] = '0';
        }

        if ($ip) {
            $params['ip'] = $ip;
        }
        if ($email) {
            $params['email'] = $email;
        }
        if ($username) {
            $params['username'] = $username;
        }

        try {
            $response = $client->request('GET', 'http://api.stopforumspam.org/api', [
                'query' => $params
            ]);

            $data = json_decode($response->getContent(), true);

            if (!isset($data['success']) || $data['success'] != 1) {
                return false;
            }

            foreach (['ip', 'email', 'username'] as $field) {
                if (isset($data[$field]) && $data[$field]['appears'] == 1) {
                    if ($checkBlacklist && isset($data[$field]['frequency']) && $data[$field]['frequency'] == 255 && isset($data[$field]['lastseen'])) {
                        $lastSeen = strtotime($data[$field]['lastseen']);
                        $hourAgo = time() - 3600;
                        if ($lastSeen >= $hourAgo) {
                            return 'sfs_blacklist';
                        }
                    }

                    if ($checkTor && $field === 'ip' && isset($data[$field]['torexit']) && $data[$field]['torexit'] == 1) {
                        return 'sfs_tor';
                    }

                    if (isset($data[$field]['confidence']) && $data[$field]['confidence'] >= $threshold) {
                        return 'sfs_confidence';
                    }
                }
            }

            return false;
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            return false;
        }
    }

The solutions? Download the mint-backgrounds-nadia-extra.deb and install it. And just like that you have these new backgrounds.

Note: This post refers to code and a project from many years ago . The content was edited in March of 2025 to remove dead links, improve clarity, or fix formatting, but no other edits were made. Enjoy this time capsule into the past.

Today marks my fourth year anniversary having a WordPress.org account and when I remember first starting to use WordPress for my blog.  I thought it would be fun to recap what I’ve accomplished since September 27th 2007 and what some of my long term WordPress goals are.

WordPress and Me Thus Far

In 2007 I started using WordPress for just my blog didn’t know what I was doing download a theme hacked up some CSS/PHP finally got everything working after hours of trying. Since that time here’s what I’ve been able to do:

• Became one of the Three most important people to WordPress
• Contributed to/wrote 5 plugins with a total download count of 121,331
• Updated 3 articles in the Codex
• Attended WordCamp Seattle
• Dipped my feet into WordPress Core Trac
• Got involved in the WordPress.org Forums and at http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/
• Updated my personal site to run completely on WordPress and Hybrid
  
  

What’s next?

Here are some of my longterm WordPress goals:

• Become a core contributor (even if it’s just fixing a typo)
• Meet Matt Mullenweg
• Continue to be involved in the Forums, discussions and Codex of WordPress
• Attend WordCamp SF
• Continue to attend WordCamp Seattle

Do you use WordPress? If so how? How long have you been using it? What are some of the things you like best?

Therefore, from now on this is where I’ll post my thoughts on PHP, jQuery, WordPress and all things related. It is my goal to provide you with useful information, interesting articles, and just a place to come and hang out with the geeky side of BandonRandon.