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Help Us Test Gasp Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin

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no spam!
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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

Small Business Marketing Strategist at GrowMap
Gail Gardner is the founder of GrowMap.com. She is a Small Business Marketing Strategist who mentors small businesses, bloggers, and freelancers. After 23 years in the field with IBM and 5.5 years managing AdWords accounts, her focus shifted to small business marketing strategy. GrowMap.com is listed by Cision as a Top 100 Site for Marketers and has received three Small Business Influencer Awards from Small Business Trends. Named by D&B a Top 50 SMB Influencer on Twitter, you can follow Gail @GrowMap and on LinkedIn.
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Comments

  3. Aksimet has never worked for my blogs, I receive tons of spam on them, will try this plugin and hope it works.
    Thanks!

    Reply

  4. 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 SawMy Profile

    Reply

  6. 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.

    Reply

    • 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 CollaborationMy Profile

      Reply

  11. 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 HoldersMy Profile

    Reply

  13. 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.

    Reply

      • 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

        Reply

  16. 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’sMy Profile

    Reply

  17. 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?

    Reply

  18. 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.

    Reply

  19. 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 WomenMy Profile

    Reply

  22. 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!

    Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

  24. 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

    Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

      • 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 FreelancingMy Profile

        Reply

  26. 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 TopicMy Profile

    Reply

    • 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 WantedMy Profile

      Reply

  27. 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 55m2My Profile

    Reply

    • 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 PromotionMy Profile

      Reply

      • 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 ItMy Profile

        Reply

        • 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 PromotionMy Profile

          Reply

  28. 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.

    Reply

      • 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.

        Reply

    • 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?My Profile

      Reply

  30. 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?

    Reply

    • 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 IsMy Profile

      Reply

  31. 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 MarketingMy Profile

    Reply

  32. 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!

    Reply

    • 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 TextMy Profile

      Reply

    • 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 PromotionMy Profile

      Reply

      • 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 BusinessesMy Profile

        Reply

  34. 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!!

    Reply

    • 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 IsMy Profile

      Reply

  35. 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.

    Reply

    • 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 IsMy Profile

      Reply

  37. 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.

    Reply

    • 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 BusinessesMy Profile

      Reply

  38. 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.

    Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

      • 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 PlaceMy Profile

        Reply

  39. 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- 2010My Profile

    Reply

    • 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!

      Reply

      • 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.

        Reply

        • 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??

          Reply

          • 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 BusinessMy Profile

        Reply

  40. 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- 2010My Profile

    Reply

  41. 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.

    Reply

    • 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- 2010My Profile

      Reply

      • 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!

        😀

        Reply

        • 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 TextMy Profile

          Reply

  44. 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).]

    Reply

      • 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 BarbieMy Profile

        Reply

        • 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- SBCMy Profile

          Reply

      • 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 🙂

        Reply

        • 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 BlogsMy Profile

          Reply

  46. 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 BarbieMy Profile

    Reply

    • 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 CommunityMy Profile

      Reply

  50. 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 PromotionMy Profile

    Reply

  51. 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 chandelierMy Profile

    Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

      • 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.

        Reply

        • 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- 2010My Profile

          Reply

  53. 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 WantedMy Profile

    Reply

  54. 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.

    Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

          • 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?

  57. 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

    Reply

      • 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 neededMy Profile

        Reply

        • 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.

          Reply

  61. 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 101My Profile

    Reply

  64. 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 OnlineMy Profile

    Reply

      • 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 researchMy Profile

        Reply

        • 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 DylanMy Profile

          Reply

    • 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 WantedMy Profile

      Reply

    • 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.

      Reply

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