UPDATE: the new GASP Anti-Spam WordPress plugin has been released and is available in the WordPress Plugin Repository.
THIS is the ALTERNATIVE TO AKISMET that provides the SOLUTION to being Flagged as a Spammer! Spread it throughout the blogosphere and your comments will work again.
If you are unable to leave a comment, please Tweet @GrowMap or use this contact info.
If you can, please test using different PCs, Operating Systems and browsers.
You can mention what you’re using in the comment if you wish – and do please let us know what DOES NOT work so we can diagnose why.
One concern we have is if commentators forget to check the box and have to use the back button will their comment still be in the form? We need bloggers to test that specifically.
Please copy your comment (in case it doesn’t get retained) and then intentionally leave the box unchecked. That will show you a message that says you didn’t check the box.
What we need to know is when you back up is your comment still there or did you lose it?
I know how frustrating it is to lose what I write and I either don’t have time to rewrite or hate doing something over so much that sometimes I just leave instead (in a blog where I don’t know the blogger. For those I know I make the time.)
Does anyone know what controls whether what you entered is still there when you return to a page?
As soon as we know the new plugin plays nicely with other plugins and does not cause any technical problems we will have others test it and then make it publicly available.
Most bloggers who use WordPress have generally used the Akismet anti-spam plugin. Unfortunately, Akismet flags regular commentators as spammers so often that we have disabled it in all of our blogs.
That has led to being inundated with spam that is now hitting 1,000+ a day in GrowMap and hundreds a day in some of our other blogs. As soon as you manage to get any kind of visibility for a blog you WILL end up with vastly more spam.
Phil Hollows, the brains behind the Feedburner alternative FeedBlitz had a sharp idea for a way to blog spam bots and Andy Bailey from CommentLuv jumped in and wrote a new anti-spam plugin. Having tested the Bad Behavior plugin which behaved extremely badly – locking us all out of GrowMap
Just removing it was not enough – it had to be deleted via ftp and then many files manually edited. Thank goodness for WordPress experts Sammy Russo of Search Friendly Web Design who fixed it (Sammy installed GrowMap).
Special thanks to these others who offered their expertise: – they are people worth knowing:
- Blogging Expert who continually gives of his experience @BloggingJunkie
- Donna Fontenot aka DazzlinDonna who teachs how to make money blogging and offers eBusiness coaching.
- Derek Semmler who installed this and our other JV blogs. Any time you need WordPress consulting consider Derek.
Recovery was difficult enough that I realized we should NOT be testing new plugins in active blogs. They should first be tested in development test sites, then on blogs that are new like this one, and only then in your primary blog.
Please comment here and let us know so that we can ensure this plugin works and make it available to others. It is time we quit losing so much time to spammers.
If you are unable to leave a comment, please Tweet @GrowMap or use this contact info or leave a comment in the latest GrowMap blog post.
AKISMET EXPERIENCES:
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Gail Gardner
sound good. this is the one im looking for. so many spam comments to my blogs. takes time to delete them. thanks
belan would love you to read ..Zojirushi Coffee Maker
Gasp Anti-Spam lloks to be a very interesting product and one that is favored by many wordpress site admins.
neil would love you to read ..Welcome To u123 Limited
Aksimet has never worked for my blogs, I receive tons of spam on them, will try this plugin and hope it works.
Thanks!
I use GASP with 100% success.
The only thing that I might like different is that it would be less confusing if even the owner of the blog gets the check box when commenting.
Most of us are already so used to checking that little box when we comment somewhere else, and when you install it on your blog and then check a random post but don’t see it that is a bit confusing.
Just a small thing.
Cuz I love Gasp.
Danny would love you to read ..Poulan Pro PP446ET 8-Inch Gas Powered Pole Chain Saw
What are the special measures taken in this plugin to avoid spam. Where is the link to check in.
There is a tab at the top of this blog for G.A.S.P. that goes to information on our anti-spambot plugin.
growmap would love you to read ..Happy Birthday GrowMap 3 Years Old Today
I have read review of many bloggers that G.A.S.P is the best if we compare it with Akismet. I have not used any of them.
When you start getting 100s or 1000s of spam comments a day you’ll want to do something. GASP works best for us.
growmap would love you to read ..Open Source: Two Paths Diverged
Hey we just use the captchca plug in…Whats the difference.
Captcha plugins seem to frequently have issues with cookies that prevent commentators from commenting. Even though you are sure you type the code in correctly it says it is not correct – until you delete that cookie – and many people don’t think to do that or have no idea how.
Another issue with captchas is that they time-out so if you have the page open for a while reading by the time you comment they don’t work any more. If the blog doesn’t work correctly your comment can be lost – and if that happens most will not bother to type another comment so you end up losing many comments. [TIP: I always refresh the captcha just before submitting the comment to avoid that issue.]
Captchas can also be very hard to read. On some sites I have to refresh a dozen times and then just guess because I can’t read them. Checking the box is so much faster and easier.
growmap would love you to read ..Bloggers And Small Businesses Can Conquer Cyberspace With Collaboration
Just test whether comment working for me or not.
Shubham Gupta would love you to read ..TF2 Crafting Tool – Check The Items You Can Craft
I have my comments successfully published here. But sometimes, it does not show up.
great site full of great content
I’ve seen lots of comments on my site like this one. 🙂
This is seriously an awesome plugin! It is a HUGE time saver. I have a large number of sites and having to sift through all of the spam is a huge time-waster. And time=money for people like me. Kudos to you Gail!
John would love you to read ..Candle Holders
I am testing the updated plugin too.
Glad the testing is going ok. I’m just about to update the plugin at the official repository with some additional tags so people can search for growmap or gasp keywords in the wp dashboard.
Hi Andy,
The plugin is wildly popular and many influential bloggers who are using it have gotten behind promoting it without being asked. Thank you for adding more tags. You may want to add both GASP and G.A.S.P. as some have specifically mentioned searcing on those.
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin Now Available at WordPress Plugin Repository
I tried GASP and it perfectly worked beyond my expectation. I strongly recommend it. We should stop using Akismet until they improve their system. I’ve posted so many comments only to know that they’re sent to the spam box. Huh
FYI, if you leave the box unchecked, I get a popup window that says something like “please check the box to prove you are human”. It did not moving to the next page for me to be able to check if my comment was still there or not when I went back.
Darvin would love you to read ..D & G Light Blue By Dolce & Gabbana For Men Eau De Toilette Spray- 42-Ounces
Hi Darvin,
That is an improvement Andy already made to the plugin. Instead of trying to fix what causes the comment to disappear, Dazzlin Donna Fontenot suggested not even leaving the page. We consider that a great improvement.
The plugin is now publicly available to any blogger who wants it. Details at the link in CommentLuv in this reply.
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin Now Available at WordPress Plugin Repository
You always seem to be at the forefront of new plugins and tools for us bloggers. I truly appreciate anything advice or tools you can share that might help simplify the job of weeding out spammers. I really haven’t noticed any issues with Askimet, but I may give this new plugin a try on some of my newer blogs.
Darvin would love you to read ..D & G Light Blue By Dolce & Gabbana For Men Eau De Toilette Spray- 42-Ounces
hey Gail… I just want come back here and comment again that this plugin really works. I think it actually blocked all the spam coming in so it stopped having to receive 70+ spam messages a day.
Thanks Gail, this is a lifesaver 🙂
Cindy would love you to read ..Success Factors Come In Two PhD’s
Hi Cindy,
Thank you so much for the update and testimonial. Would you consider going to the Official WordPress plugin page and leaving a comment there and checking the box that the plugin works? The link is in the post I’ll put in CommentLuv in this reply.
growmap would love you to read ..GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin Now Available at WordPress Plugin Repository
It seems to me it might be a good idea to change all of the text fields in the plugin in order to prevent easy detection by spambots. What do you think?
I have a number of blogs, and I’m thinking I will edit the default text so I don’t have to manually change it with each installation.
Speaking of modification, would it make the plugin more vulnerable to defeat if the confirmation checkbox were above the Submit button?
Well, that seems strange. I just noticed that one blog has the checkbox above Submit and the other below!
Hi Lane,
Which blog? Some had an earlier version but all should now have the latest version.
growmap would love you to read ..Join Bloggers Supporting Bloggers NOW
Hi Lane,
That is a good idea and easily done because Andy gave us access to edit those fields.
growmap would love you to read ..Join Bloggers Supporting Bloggers NOW
It is always very tough to differentiate between user and spammer to protect your website.I think this this new plug in can help us out.Sound good to me.
Thanks.
It is definitely a HUGE time-saver and saves strain on your brain trying to decide if something is spam or not. Only real people leave comments now.
growmap would love you to read ..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
I got the new GASP from Growmap in an email. I downloaded it to my computer. It wasn’t very big zipped, just 4 kb. I went to my handy dandy blog and clicked on plugins from the dashboard. I told it add new, then clicked on upload, and browsed to the plugin on my computer. I told it upload again, and poof, up it went. I clicked “activate the plugin” and was done. I uploaded this plugin to six additional blogs in a little over an hour. I have not had any trouble with installation or function.
Stephanie Suesan Smith would love you to read ..Love-Avon Army of Women
hey Gail… where can I find the download link to the plugin? I’d like to test it too, thanks 🙂
Cindy would love you to read ..Thank You BloggerLUV
Testing the updated plugin to check how it is working.
I hope this works for you as I may need it for my own blogs I am writing. I have no issue with people commenting on blogs as long as it is relevant and adds something to the blog, I do it myself. Make it hard for cheap spammers!
Hi Smithy,
It is working and we’re rolling it out to other bloggers with advanced WP skills to test in their blogs. It will be made available to anyone who wants it and those who are willing to be testers can have it now.
Hi Gail.
I just wondered if you had any idea when this will be available? 😛
rob sellen would love you to read ..Wall worthy pictures coming soon!
Hi Rob,
I emailed the latest version of the plugin to you and almost all of my closest collaborators today.
Gail would love you to read ..Probably The Best Blogging Course
This is CRUCIAL! Or you can just type in index pages or what ever pages that you don’t want spammers to post links, because they just do it for high page rank with the search engines.
So basically just add rel link=”nofollow” before meta tags
Spammers hit nofollow blogs too so that will not prevent them from spamming you; however, it IS true that the reason this blog gets so much spam is that they share and sell lists of dofollow sites which makes Dofollow blogs and especially those that use CommentLuv and KeywordLuv a bigger target.
I believe this is also the reason some bloggers who used commentluv or keywordluv in the past going back to no-follow.
I have a question about the functionality of “Confirm you are NOT a spammer” box. So if I didn’t tick the box, I would be labelled as spam?
Sarah would love you to read ..Quit Unemployment and Start Freelancing
Thank you for this plugin. We know many WordPress bloggers who will be relieved to have a better way to control spam.
Valerie would love you to read ..Better Woman Now
You’re welcome.
Ok, I’m honestly not sure if this would be a solution or not, to the problem of losing comment text when hitting the back button after submitting the form without checking the Not a Spammer box. But, I think it might solve the problem, so whoever is creating this plugin might want to give it a try.
I’m guessing that the problem might disappear if the form isn’t actually submitted before error checking. So, if the error checking is done via js before the form is posted (i.e. click submit, check for errors, if none, continue posting submit; but if there are errors, don’t submit at all). If the error is caught and corrected before the form is actually posted, then there’s no need to ever press the Back button, and theoretically, no loss of comment text. That’s my guess. Worth a try, I’d think.
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..How Many Angles Can You Come Up With For One Topic
Hi Donna,
I will share this with Phil and Andy. I do not know how the plugin handles error checking but at least now I understand what you meant on Twitter. Thank you for your input.
We may have another issue but I have no way of knowing yet if it is a problem in this blog, or with that plugin or with compatibility with the CommentLuv plugin.
Several times while replying to comments I was able to select a CommentLuv post to feature but it did not appear in my comment. I have not seen that issue in any other blog testing the plugin yet so until I do we don’t know if that might not be just an issue in THIS blog and NOT with the plugin.
growmap would love you to read ..WordPress WhiteList BlackList Plugin Wanted
that’s a great idea Donna!
I’ll put that in the source code and send it off to Gail as soon as it’s done
thanks for your feedback.
Andy Bailey would love you to read ..New theme and guest posters coming in October
Thank you so much – both of you.
Gail would love you to read ..How To Score A Mommy Blogger
did you get it? I sent it via email on the 22nd Sep
Andy Bailey would love you to read ..New theme and guest posters coming in October
Yes, received and installed and just emailed to close collaborators in case any of them want to be the first to use it. As soon as we get it installed in a dozen or so blogs with no problems I’ll release it to anyone who wants it.
Any blogger reading this who wants it now let me know. Close collaborators check your email as you probably already have it.
Practical articles on the information that most readers need to know this. Thank you very much for the link. I think as usual, brilliant vital and useful information. I marked your post, I will send this site to many of my friends, good job keep it up.
Paris Accommodation would love you to read ..Mouffetard Apartment Paris 1BR 55m2
The above comment may not be spam, but it looks like it in that nothing in it is related directly to the post. It contains only generalized flattery, which is usually what I see in the comments I delete from my own blogs.
The question is, did Paris Accomodation (interesting name!) check the box or did he or she use a program that checked it?
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
Hi Lane,
I agree that one may be spam but I will tell you that since I already know many people on Twitter that REAL comments often look a lot more like spam than the one above. That comment i sunique and was hand written and not pasted. (I know that because searching on the sentences in a search engine returns no results.)
I guarantee that person checked the box because so far no bots have defeated the plugin AND because they are a regular reader and commentator in this blog.
Here is a question for you. Why is that such a big issue for so many bloggers? Is having a comment here or there that might or not be spam but that helps a real business STAY in business such a bad thing?
When it doubt I choose to err on the side of giving them the comment and link provided that link goes to a legitimate site.
Did WE know what was a spammy looking commented when we started blogging? Bloggers tend to be people in the top 2% of the population. We can not judge all others by what we know now. That is simply unfair and unwise.
I choose to look at the larger picture. If I allow a comment that keeps a business running and that business employs people so they have a roof over their heads and food to eat and spends money with other businesses THAT is far more important to me than whether the comment is or is not spam.
growmap would love you to read ..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
On my own blogs I never see the above type of comment accompanied by URLs remotely related to my site’s niche. OTOH, I am happy to approve comments which promote products related to the interests that bring visitors to my site even if the comment is just a plug for their product.
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
Try to have Challenge. Its also a good plugin for restricting spams. Challenge restricts comment spam by throwing the commenter a challenge. The default challenge is an addition and multiplication math question. The challenge and the answer can also be user-defined. They can be of anything including PHP-evaluatable expressions.
I did a search for Challenge, and it was pretty hard to find. It seems not to have been updated since 2006, but perhaps I didn’t have the best link: http://bit.ly/csMagS
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
This plugin is still working perfectly for me and we’re rolling it out across dozens of blogs. Only manually entered spam comes in and we went from 1000+ spam comments a day to a couple of dozen total comments almost all of them real.
It DOES NOT prevent anyone from typing in a comment manually. It only blocks bots but apparently almost all of my spam issues were automated spam.
Good post, thanks for sharing this article.
Hello guys,
I believe this to be a real comment but I need to tell you that short, generic comments will almost always get your comment deleted and are highly likely to get you flagged as a spammer by Akisment.
Whenever you leave a comment you need to make it OBVIOUS to the blogger that you actually read the post and you’re not a bot. I added anchor text for you so my readers don’t think I’m linking anything strange around here.
growmap would love you to read ..How Much is a Memorable Logo Worth?
Gail, you disabled Askimet? Wow! You’re braver than I am. Right now, I’m using Askimet and Bad Behavior. Askimet does flag a number of real comments as Spam. I’ve had mixed results with Bad Behavior and will probably disable it when I get a chance.
I’ve never heard of the Gasp plugin. Conditional Captcha seems to be trendy and well-regarded among the blogging niche. Have you tried it yet?
Hi Jarret,
I disabled Akismet a long time ago. What point is there if you have to review everything it sends to spam because there are so many false positives? It takes the same amount of time to review them in pending as it does in spam.
We had serious problems trying to test Bad Behavior and I am still saying thanks that we didn’t end up reloading the entire site.
You wouldn’t have heard of this plugin because Andy at CommentLuv just wrote it based on an idea Phil at FeedBlitz sent him. So far it was been wonderful – almost no spam at all. Going from 1000+ a day to only 1-2 a day makes me so happy.
Today I had maybe a dozen but they were all from the same spammer so I added them to my blacklist. I tested another captcha (not that one) but three regular commentators had problems with the within the first 48 hours so I disabled it.
A captcha is another possible solution and if the bot spammers manage to defeat this plugin then we may have to test out another one. Maybe we’ll start with Conditional Captcha.
Right now I’m hoping this one will be our solution. I can’t wait to get it installed in all the blogs I manage.
growmap would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
The problem is that there is no clear definition of spammer. Many bloggers believe anyone who promotes a site is a spammer – even the ones that install plugins like CommentLuv and KeywordLuv.
What people believe about that will evolve over time.
growmap would love you to read ..Word of Mouth Marketing
Ok, I wrote a long message, but I forgot to check the I am not a spammer box! Doh! LOL
Found your blog via Twitter after reading an article you retweeted on Canadian SEO Prices.
Thought I’d stop by and say hi, I see you’ve had lots of input already, but I wanted to say hello anyway!
Have a great day!
Hi Warren,
I had just replied to a comment thread on BloggingJunkie you had commented in and thought that was why you visited.
Thanks for stopping by and saying hello. We are working to diagnose and resolve the issue that causes comments to not still be visible if you forget to check the box.
Since that is a common problem on many sites that can be caused by code errors, plugin incompatibility and who knows what else I usually remember to copy before I enter just in case. I hate having to type things over again.
growmap would love you to read ..Building Traffic Using Anchor Text
wo w!the blog is very good
On my blogs, this type of comment is what I call spam. It has a URL unrelated to the blog’s content, and the comment itself contributes nothing to the ongoing conversation. I almost never get these when I have a captcha in place.
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
Hi Lane,
I agree that one is spam. They sometimes slip through and I delete them. That one was probably due to human error moderating comments when exhausted (I tend to do that when I am too tired to think clearly and do other things.) Or my volunteer spam helpers may have missed it.
I unlinked it. I do keep comments intentionally that many bloggers would not because I understand the larger picture of how links are important to small businesses and blogs succeeding and they are collectively responsible for improving economic conditions for all.
growmap would love you to read ..Support Small Businesses
I recently am in a testing phase myself with a new product that instead install’s onto the DNS server and prevent spam bots from even getting to the site in the first place. I am testing it out right now but I am thoroughly impressed with it!! I will be talking about it later this month to early next month. Great way to fight spam and hackers!!
Hi Paul,
We tested Bad Behavior which works in a similar way. It locked us all out of this site and they had to ftp in to remove it and then manually edit many files. That is the major drawback to that type of prevention.
I suspect few bloggers can install anything on the DNS servers their blogs are using.
growmap would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Weird – just left comment and it didn’t show up at all. Hmm.
Anyway, perhaps we should visuall emphasize the button with color, typeface changes (bold?) so that it’s harder to miss 1st time.
Hi Phil,
Hmmm. We’ll have to watch for that and see if it was just a random occurence or some intermittent bug in the plugin or on this blog. We’ll know more when we test it in many other blogs.
growmap would love you to read ..How To Score A Mommy Blogger
Does this plugin have any way to prevent a spam program from checking that box?
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
Hi Lane,
They haven’t managed to do that yet but we know that is a potential weakness and will address that once we make sure everything else is working. If you have suggestions on the best way to prevent programmers from defeating that box I’d love to hear them and will share them with Andy and Phil.
growmap would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
The ultimate end-all solution to your comment spam troubles. This will effectively disable comments and is good for stopping comment spam floods. No one will be able to comment on your WordPress site.
Are you admitting you are a spammer? The only comments it blocks are those generated by bots. All comments left by real people will get through. Yours did.
Spammers aren’t losing anything because I never approved their comments anyway. Bloggers like me gain because we don’t have to spend hours deleting all that junk – and believe me those comments are useless junk. They are NOT about the specific post and do not deserve to be approved.
Comments – even those from people building links – can now be found and approved quickly. We welcome real comments from real people – even linkbuilders – provided they make at least some effort to add to the conversation.
Few bloggers are as lenient as I am because I prefer to assist people in improving what they are doing instead of just keeping them out. I favor supporting bloggers and small local and online businesses but not unethical time-stealing bot users.
growmap would love you to read ..Support Small Businesses
Just testing out the new anti spam plugin, my first attempt I forgot to tick the box to say I am not a spammer… And lost the comment when I hit the back button.
Maybe we should put the “I am not” text in bold, italic, red so folks won’t miss it? It is below the submit button which means they might not notice until too late, then get tripped by they FF back button defect.
Yes we will want to make it more obvious and relocate it to make sure we hopefully don’t miss it. As for losing the comment that should not happen.
We suspect there is a conflict with another plugin or in the Theme coding or in something on the site because we were able to reproduce the problem in one blog by installing a particular plugin there that caused the name, email and Website URL fields to be blank when you back up. The plugin causing that symptom was for editing comments.
We believe there is a similar conflict causing the comment field to be erased. Derek and Ron have been too busy to work on it lately but I just asked Imran aka @BloggingJunkie if he would like to work on finding the cause.
We’ll get it figured out asap and make the plugin available for others. Today I had 20 pending comments, 18 real and 2 manually written spam. Not a single bot comment got through. Zero complaints from any real commentators.
What a blessing! I can’t wait to get this plugin installed in every blog I manage.
growmap would love you to read ..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Thank you for joining in Kathy.
My miracle worker and WordPress Ninja Derek has determined that something on this blog is causing the page to reload when you click back. That was clearing the fields.
We are half-way there. The name, email, Website and Twitter ID fields are all now staying populated even in FireFox (known bug in Thesis 1.7 resolved by going to 1.8 and conflict with plugin that allowed you to edit your comments; had to disable that)
The comment field works too now in Epiphany. Now we only need to get the comment to stop disappearing in FireFox.
Gail would love you to read ..San Francisco Marketing Conference Sep 17- 2010
I would think it has something to do with your theme. Somewhere it thinks it has to reload. I would look at your theme php!
Paul, that would seem to be true but the exact same theme running on another site does not have the same issue. There was another site where this was occurring as well and it turned out to be a bad Javascript include that was causing it.
Derek,
I am running a WordPress Multisite and would like to know if the thesis them works without a problem with WordPress MSU? Have you tested it using MSU??
Hi Paul,
As far as I know Derek doesn’t have any MSU sites but I’ll try to remember to ask him. He will have gone to bed by now because he has to get up really early.
I sent out a Tweet in hopes someone else can provide feedback on Thesis with WP MSU.
growmap would love you to read ..Help Us Test Gasp Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin
There are two issues using Thesis with Multisite. One is that Thesis writes custom design options to layout.css in the custom folder and the other is that the TimThumb script has issues with the way WP MS does file attachment rewrites.
The latter I’ve posted on: TimThumb, WP MS and Thesis.
The former has a few solutions. If you are only using a default install of Thesis on multiple site you can use the same Thesis folder without modification. You can have different Thesis theme folders for each site in the network that you want to use a custom Thesis install with, or you can make a few modifications in one of the core files to use the same Thesis folder with separate custom folders for each site.
I’ve posted that last solution too Thesis with WPMU. The code in functions.php for 1.8 is ever so slightly different to 1.7, but it all still works and I think it uses the same line numbers.
Hi Paul,
We use Thesis on all our blogs and the others aren’t failing. There was a known Thesis issue related to this and we upgraded our Theme. At least we know what the issue is and no one is more qualified to diagnose the cause than Derek.
He does beautiful Thesis designs including that site, our Golf Blog and our Gift Blog – and he does all that on top of having his DerekSemmler.com site and a full time job!
We’ll get it sorted out and fixed asap. I can not wait to get this plugin on all our blogs. What a blessing it is to have almost ZERO spam.
growmap would love you to read ..How to Build a Successful Blog Based Business
TEST after Derek found one plugin that was in conflict (comment edit function -installing it in another blog reproduced the problem of the name, email, Website and comment fields being empty) and he disabled that plugin here.
Now the name, email, Website and Twitter ID fields all stay populated but the comment field (in FireFox) is still going missing.
Something else is causing the rest of the issue. It is always more challenging to diagnose a problem and resolve it when there are multiple causes but we WILL get there because Derek is brilliant.
Even the comment field was preserved in the Chromium browser this time so we may only still have that problem in FireFox.
Gail would love you to read ..San Francisco Marketing Conference Sep 17- 2010
Gail,
I am joining in on the testing fun. This comment is being done through my FeedDemon RSS reader.
I am testing to see if the comment text will still be there if I press submit without checking the box.
The answer is yes. Seems to work fine with my FeedDemon RSS reader.
Looks like a good plugin so far.
Hi Kathy,
Thank you so much for testing with yet another way. That is very good news indeed. Have you considered joining our SBC blog collaboration? We would love to have a self-described “Business blogger, freelance writer, self-employed work from home psycho”.
growmap would love you to read ..Why I Recommend BloggerLuv- CommentLuv- SBC
Been by to check out the new plug-in. How is everything going?
ps. I confirmed that I am not a spammer 😀
Only bloggers who are buried in spam can appreciate how wonderful it is to log into a blog and have ZERO spam and easily see 11 brand new REAL comments that came in while you slept. Blessings on Andy and Phil for creating this plugin. May it keep working!
WOW that is one bright green snake image on your site. If you didn’t self-proclaim your blog as being about poetry I would think it was about images and photography. I wish I knew the best way to describe it; maybe art expression?
If you want to see some really unusual images do go visit.
growmap would love you to read ..San Francisco Marketing Conference Sep 17- 2010
It started out as poetry, then I published a few stories then asked some premier photographers for permission to create galleries 😀 Been doing that for the last several months now! Just started incorporating guest post thanks to post like these
You all are awesome!
😀
Those photos are gorgeous – some aren’t photos so I guess they’re art? You should definitely start collaborating with Stephanie. She has a new Photography blog and what she has accomplished in only a few months is amazing.
Together you can both have Alexa numbers under 40,000 in short order. Read the post I’ve put in CommentLuv in this reply. That link doesn’t matter to me or I’d fix it but it is good to get in the habit of always linking with optimum anchor text.
That one thing is more important than anything else a blogger can do.
growmap would love you to read ..Building Traffic Using Anchor Text
Thank you so much for the link! As always, brilliant important and extremely useful information. I really appreciate all you do to help everyone here 😀
Thank you AIDY,
I have much more planned for the future so I do hope you’ve subscribed or are coming back regularly.
growmap would love you to read ..How To Score A Mommy Blogger
Tested using Chromium browser – fails to save fields in it too.
ffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffdsfsdffds
[Comment edited but left as a reminder to let the Thesis Theme folks know. The original was a long line of random characters. They went spilling out into the right sidebar. Fix suggested by another blogger (just below).]
LOL
I definitely don’t have that in my blacklist. Too bad WordPress can’t wrap all that and keep it in the box.
Gail would love you to read ..DoFollow CommentLuv KeywordLuv Community
look for this code in your path/to/theme/custom/layout.css
.format_text p {
margin-bottom:1.571em;
}
and replace it with
.format_text p {
margin-bottom:1.571em;
word-wrap:break-word !important;
}
this should break the super long words to make it fit the box(at least it should in mozilla firefox ).
sigh, I forgot to check the box this is the second version i wrote 🙁
Alex would love you to read ..Imbraca Familia Barbie
ROFLOL….way beyond my current technical know-how but much appreciated. I’ll point that out to those with the talent to know what to do with it.
That sounds like something Thesis should handle automatically for bloggers like me who don’t write our own code.
I am so sorry about you losing your first comment. That hurts. I’ll see if I can’t get that fixed on this site asap.
Where have you been hiding? Check out the post I’ll put in CommentLuv in this reply and let me know if you want to join our private collaboration.
growmap would love you to read ..Why I Recommend BloggerLuv- CommentLuv- SBC
You can try to use this little javascript that memorizez form values http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex16/formremember.htm
it uses cookies to retain data and refills the forms upon revisiting the page.
It is very easy to setup and I think it will resolve your problem..
Alex would love you to read ..Imbraca Familia Barbie
Hi Alex,
That looks like a great solution. I’ll run it by Derek.
Gail would love you to read ..Word of Mouth Marketing
I’m unconvinced on this one. The problem is really FF and not the script. I don’t want to overburden the GASP script especially as it’s possible there will be other comment plugins that it won’t “know” about (? Andy can you comment) and so it won’t be able to populate the values 100% of the time.
FWIW.
BTW Glad it’ working so well on Growmap 🙂
Hi Phil,
I was thinking more that any site that has forms (few don’t) could use a script like that on the site itself rather than in the plugin.
Remember that I have to run that by Sammy and/or Derek as I don’t handle that kind of technical detail myself. I have to rely on them and you and Andy to know what works best.
If the script resolves that issue I could recommend that on the same page where someone obtains the plugin because that would be better done site-wide and not plug-in specific given that any serious blogger has a contact form and possibly others.
Are you sure it is Firefox and not some strange javascript issue on specific PCs? Firefox definitely is NOT what it once was – although it seems to be better lately thank goodness.
Still working wonderfully except for this little issue so far.
growmap would love you to read ..How CommentLuv Grows Businesses and Blogs
I wrote a comment didnt checked the boxed and when i used the back button all the boxes were empty and my comment gone.
Browser: Firefox/3.5.12
os: windows 7
Btw ,my browser remembered the fields (when i double click one I can choose for example the username i used when I first submitted the comment)
I will try it with a javasscript back button like this javascript:history.go(-1)
Alex would love you to read ..Imbraca Familia Barbie
Thank you Alex,
We are actively researching to find out how to get that data to stay there when you back up. It is inevitable that we will sometimes forget to check the box.
Gail would love you to read ..How CommentLuv Grows Businesses and Blogs
testing 1.2……testing 1.2……LOL
I guess I checked the box……hehehe
Hi Matt,
Thanks for helping test. I’m writing this from my backup PC and connection to see if having only one tab open might keep the comment and other fields filled when I *forget* to click the box and have to back up.
Just tested and only the Twitter ID field is populated and comment lost. What IS up with that? Totally separate PC running older version of Ubuntu but Firefox 3.6.9 (which I did NOT knowingly update to on this PC).
Gail would love you to read ..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
Testing to see if comment and other fields are preserved when using Epiphany browser.
Gail would love you to read ..How Much is a Memorable Logo Worth?
Tested from Backup PC using Epiphany browser. That browser DOES save the comment and all fields.
growmap would love you to read ..Local Search Directory Listings
Not ticking the box sent me to an error 500 page…totally not what you were expecting, nor something you want to get…it always deletes the comment on the back-space.
Dennis Edell would love you to read ..Contest Sponsors – Should They be Allowed to Participate
Hi Dennis,
You’re the first to report a 500 error. If you forget to check the box what you’re supposed to get is a page that says this:
“You forgot to click the checkbox to say you are not a spammer. Either that or you have disabled javascript. Please enable javascript before leaving a comment and make sure you check the checkbox that you are not a spammer, you can press the back button on your browser and your comment text should still be there.”
I am doing my best to find out what controls whether the fields including the comment are preserved when you back up. So far no one has known and it works erratically from site to site, here, and using different browsers.
Gail would love you to read ..DoFollow CommentLuv KeywordLuv Community
If nothing else, a good tip on how to get more comments. LOL! Kidding.
Dennis Edell would love you to read ..Contest Sponsors – Should They be Allowed to Participate
LOL
Whoops! My comment was gone after I “forgot” to check the box and clicked the back button on Firefox 3.6.9 running in Ubuntu Linux.
I sure hope this is the answer! This whole Akismet fiasco plus the hunt for a decent alternative is taking too much time from too many people.
Lane Lester would love you to read ..Website Promotion
Hi Lane,
It is the answer IF we can figure out how NOT to lose your comment if you forget to check the box. We have yet to determine where that is controlled (OS, browser, blog, WprdPress, plugin)?
I am using the same configuration you are (Firefox 3.6.9 on Ubuntu).
Gail would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Hey guys I want to help you with testing your plugin. I’m also using the aksimet on my blogs but Ive already had some minor problems with it so I would be glad to replace it for something more functional. I’m ticking the box.
Thomas would love you to read ..Outdoor candle chandelier
Thanks for coming by and assisting Thomas. We’re working to develop a process that really works. We’ll let everyone know when we feel we have it right.
Curious…what does GASP stand for? I’m guessing it’s Growmap AntiSPam but thought I’d ask anyway.
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..Hacked Blogs- Who Ya Gonna Call
I think Phil from FeedBlitz coined that. I’m not sure it can stick because there are a lot of GASPs already. No plugins as far as I know though.
Actually it was Andy from CommentLuv 🙂
So what should we call it then? GRASP? GRowmap AntiSpam Plugin?
Grasp.com looks like it’s in the hads of a domainer so might even be possible to buy it.
Hi Phil,
I don’t know…what do you think? How about Grantispam? Then we wouldn’t have to buy the domain and ranking for it will be a cakewalk.
GR = for GrowMap (and to make it unique)
AN = for Andy
Antispam = obvious
Now if we could only get Phil and FeedBlitz in there somewhere…
We can definitely feature FeedBlitz on any page that talks about it.
Gail would love you to read ..San Francisco Marketing Conference Sep 17- 2010
I upped the memory setting in FireFox to 150 to see if that will cause it to save my comment. If this works that can NOT be 150 MB.
This is just too bizarre. I lost the comment above on GrowMap if I don’t check the box but I don’t lose the same comment here with all the same data in it and exactly the same comment.
I also don’t lose it when I do exactly the same comment from the same PC using the Epiphany browser.
Gail would love you to read ..WordPress WhiteList BlackList Plugin Wanted
I often have problems with my comments being censored because I refer to my girl dogs as bitches, the proper term for them.
Didn’t check box, lost comment upon back. ComLuv is not loading, just the bar going back and forth.
Using Firefox and had memory at 50mb, just increased it to 75mb. Hope I don’t crash things.
Hi Stephanie,
That is the problem with blacklists – most people don’t think about OTHER uses for words that are commonly used improperly – or worse yet – part of other common words.
One clean comment with no reason for anything to go byebye.
You’ll be happy to know that my previous comments from this account got trashed because I used a word that starts with a V and ends with a gra. 🙂 However, this account goes through fine when that word isn’t in it.
Now let’s try a simple url:
Really, this doesn’t do zapping? Well, then SOMETHING zapped both tries I did with the V word.
I have the word Viagra in the blacklist section of WordPress so it sent those two to spam. Do you suppose it is ok to leave those comments visible or I should delete them so my blog doesn’t get flagged by some computer program checking for words in comments?
Ever wish we still enjoyed the blissful state of ignorance of all this complicated stuff?
Trying this again. Again, one spammy word. Viagra.
Ok, second comment using a name different than the one that WP is aware of. So, let’s try some spam, shall we?
First test, just a word, no link.
Viagra
Ok, the plain Donna account got sent to moderation. Here’s another plain one.
You needed one approved using that data for any to go live immediately. Try again?
Why is replying threading in this comment but not the other one?
Tested with Firefox 3.6.8, checkbox ticked
Daniel Rose would love you to read ..Metrics for metrics sake
Thanks Daniel.
Worked ok? It is so nice to log in and not already have 100s of spam messages. I just hope I’m not losing any real comments.
growmap would love you to read ..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Yeah worked fine for me:)
If this works well for you I might need to look at it. I turned Akismet off the other day, and now I have to moderate everything! 🙂
As a side note, I just forgot to tick the new checkbox, so I had to retype this comment after clicking back! – woops
Daniel Rose would love you to read ..When managers aren’t needed
Hi Daniel,
Working beautifully so far. Not a single spam in two days so most of my spam was definitely bots or the manual spammers are on holiday.
We’re still trying to determine what controls whether the comment and other fields are saved when you back up or gone. Hopefully someone knows that answer.
It is erratic. On some blogs my comments are saved and on others they’re not and in this blog using the Epiphany browser they’re saved but using FireFox only the Twitter field is saved.
oh hai, this is a comment. Still here after going back. Opera, Windows XP
Rooker would love you to read ..achura- Whats a burrahobbit got to do with my pocket
Thank you for assisting. Hopefully if you use the same name, email, and URL from now on your comments will go live immediately. If they don’t we have to blame Akismet and WordPress or my blacklist (which shouldn’t block anything you would usually want to write).
Gail would love you to read ..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
I’ve read in the past that upping your Firefox cache size can solve the problem of form data being lost when hitting back button. Don’t know if it’s true or not, but easy enough to test. Go to FF prefs, and change cache in Advanced/Network. (I’m assuming you’re still using FF).
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..Social Networking 101
That could be it. Thank you. I’ll go check that.
So annoying – or maybe that is a “fix”. I am trying to reply to your comment while logged into this blog by clicking reply and expecting it to be threaded but it is putting it in this blue box instead.
Buggy….we just upgraded this blog to 3.0 Thursday night.
What is going on? It let me reply to the comment above from DDF and it threaded it but when I replied to the comment from DazzlinDonna on September 11, 2010 at 1:56 pm it put those replies in blue boxes instead of threading them.
Changed my setting from 50 to 100 and checking to see if that helps.
Very interesting. After I changed the setting it kept the name, email, Website and Twitter ID but not the comment.
I’ll try increasing it again.
Gail would love you to read ..WordPress WhiteList BlackList Plugin Wanted
I upped that setting to 150 to see if that will cause it to save my comment. If this works that can NOT be 150 MB.
No help there. On the next test I was back to just having the Twitter ID again – it lost the name, e-mail, Website and comment.
Gail would love you to read ..Why the Economy is In Decline and What We Can Do to Improve It
It’s working fine for me.. Have you guys tried Typepad Antispam yet? I usually use it alongside of Akismet, but as you said.. some false positives. I hope your plugin works better and we can use it to help reduce it a bit.
Aaron would love you to read ..Panasonic VIERA TC-P50G25 50-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV Review
Hi Aaron,
Do you happen to know how Typepad Antispam works or how well it works in WordPress? So far this is vastly better (blocking bots) than moderating the spam section because I didn’t log in to 1000 new bot delivered spam messages.
Gail would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Previous comment seems to have worked. Says “Your comment is awaiting moderation”. Forgot to mention I’m commenting via Chrome on Linux.
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..35 ways to increase blog traffic
Grrrrr….forgot to check the I am not a spammer box and lost my reply to this comment.
It went to spam which was probably triggered either by a word in your keyword phrase or you being flagged by Akismet as a spammer. It appears that WP uses their database even if we disable or even delete Akismet.
Gail would love you to read ..Bloggers- Position Yourself Where the Money Is
Ok, so let’s try this from a different account. I did include a lot of spammy type stuff in the first one, so that could be why. And of course, I did that on purpose. So, I’ll comment using various aliases, and some will be spammy and some won’t. We’ll see what happens.
I have the WordPress option checked that requires you to have one approved comment for any comment to go live immediately.
growmap would love you to read ..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Test 1. Not checking box. Got the spammer message, hit the back button, and my comment is still here, waiting for me. Good.
Test 2. Leaving url in comment:
Test 3. Leaving html and url in comment Lose weight fast
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..Ways To Make Money Online
Thank you so much for testing for me. It was so nice to log in and not have 1,000+ new bot delivered spam comments today.
Now if I only knew why it doesn’t keep the name, email, Website or comment fields filled in for me when I don’t check the Confirm you are NOT a spammer BUT it does keep the Twitter ID field.
Does anyone know what controls that?
Gail would love you to read ..Best of GrowMap – Our Most Important Posts All in One Place
Ok, so I’ve been doing a little digging into the browser back button behavior. From here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/507793/best-way-for-back-button-to-leave-form-data it says:
“Q: After the user sees the generated page I want to allow them to press the back button and make changes to the form. I would like to display the form as they had filled it out previously.
A: There is no need to add any clever fancy code; that is what browsers will do by default, unless you take active steps to prevent it, such as:
breaking the cache with Cache-Control/Pragma headers
generating the form page itself from the response to a POST (use POST-Redirect-GET instead)
generating the form elements from script
Cookie solutions are fragile and need special handling if you don’t want two tabs open at once to get very confused. Make it easy for yourself: let the browser do the work.”
So, I’d check the form for those things. Then, regardless of whether it’s happening to you on this form or any other form, there is apparently a popular Firefox extension called Lazarus Form Recovery that can be used. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984/
I’m not sure how accurate any of this info is, but just thought I’d pass it along in case it helps anyone.
DazzlinDonna would love you to read ..niche research
Hmmm. Well I am guilty of having way too many tabs open at once so that could be why it behaves so erratically for me. Just confirmed that this is a FireFox 3.6.9 issue or something unique to how it behaves in Ubuntu from separate PCs running different levels of Ubuntu on totally separate Internet accesses.
growmap would love you to read ..Google Instant Faster Than Bob Dylan
i got duplicate content detected you already said that
Hi Danny,
The way it is supposed to work is that once you have a comment approved in a blog, future comments should go live immediately. I know that only works if you don’t change the keywords you’re using in the name field.
I want to test because I suspect that if you happen to be flagged by Akismet that your comments won’t go live ever but it is also possible the won’t go live if you use words on some invisible blacklist.
Gail would love you to read ..WordPress WhiteList BlackList Plugin Wanted
Testing testing 1, 2, 3
What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink in this place?
Olly olly oxen free
Seize the Moment
Thanks for helping, Karen. We’re still trying to figure out why comments are still there for some and missing for others.
when i uncheck I get the error to go back when I go back my comment was not there.
Danny would love you to read ..Foreclosure Friday September 10 2010
Hi Danny,
We’re still trying to figure out why sometimes the form is still filled in and other times it isn’t.
Do me a favor and do another comment using the same information. I want to know whether your comments will immediately go live now as they should or not.
Ok here is a test I check the box
Danny would love you to read ..Foreclosure Friday September 10 2010