Comment Guard Pro Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is Robotic Spam?

Robotic spam are spam comments created by automated scripts / bots. They contribute to over 99% of comment spam in blogs. Comment spam has gained prominence due to the ease with which spamming operations can be scripted for large scale campaigns. Most robotic spams either try to spam by submitting comment form or by using trackbacks. Comment Guard Pro stops all kind of robotic spams from reaching your blog.

What is Human spam / Manually Submitted Spam?

Human spam or manually entered spam is when a human being actually takes time to visit your blog and drop their spam comment, mostly touting their site, product or services.

Manually entered spams are hardest to catch as their identification is in many cases subjective. What some considers spam, others may not. It is a matter of preference. If someone leaves a comment relevant to the context and then adds his own link (which may be a recent site selling the product or service), I would normally approve it. Others consider even such links as spam as it is openly advertising their site / product / service on your blog. However, for example, I wouldn't accept any comment containing certain keywords like v*agra, p*ker etc., while others may allow them. Looking for contextual information is also not sufficient in many cases. Fortunately manually entered spams comprise less than 1 per cent of comment spams.

Comment Guard Pro is effective in dealing with human spam with several pluglets to protect your blog against such spams. However we do not force you to accept our judgement (on what is spam and what is not) unlike other anti-comment spam plugins. While we provide sensible defaults, you can always change them to your liking and impose your own rules on what you consider spam. We provide you with every means to make it extremely easy to do so.

What are Pluglets? / Can I write my own pluglets?

Pluglets are plugins for Comment Guard Pro. You can not only configure the 15 built-in pluglets or the 7 additional pluglet that ships with Comment Guard Pro Power Pack, you can also write your own pluglets to extend and enhance Comment Guard Pro.

Comment Guard Pro provides an open API to write your own pluglets and full source code of Comment Guard Pro Power Pack as examples to help you. You are encouraged to discuss the API in our forum.

Can I sell pluglets?

Yes. You can write your own pluglets and also sell them. We would even promote your pluglets in our highly popular blog. You can also announce them in our forum.

Is ReCAPTCHA required?

No. ReCAPTCHA is not required to use Comment Guard Pro.

However we do provide a way to integrate ReCAPTCHA, should you so desire, in Are you Human pluglet. CAPTCHA technology is used only for Javascript disabled browsers which comprise a negligible portion of viewers on any site. When you enable ReCAPTCHA, it will then replace the in-built CAPTCHA support. You can freely sign up (and use) your blog(s) for ReCAPTCHA. When you sign-up your blog you will be provided with a public & private key which you should provide in Are you human pluglet configuration to enable ReCAPTCHA instead of the default CAPTCHA service. To re-iterate any form of CAPTCHA is used only as a backup, most of your readers will never know that it exists.

Should I disable Bad Behavior / Spam Karma 2 as I am using Comment Guard Pro?

Yes. Spam Karma / Bad Behavior is not required anymore. Comment Guard Pro was born out of our frustrations with existing anti-comment spam software, specifically with their high rate of false positives (genuine comments mis-identified as spam) and false negatives (spams which passes through).

Comment Guard Pro was designed from ground-up to replace the the current crop of anti-comment spam plugins with a significantly better solution. Comment Guard Pro proved immune to robotic spams of any kind in tests with several million spams. We also have several measures in place to stop human generated spams (where someone comes to your website and manually submits their spam comments. Comment Guard Pro provides full transparency in its functionality and allows you to extensively customize it. It also allows you to replace, extend and enhance the existing functionality with an open API.

Can I use Akismet with Comment Guard Pro?

Comment Guard Pro was designed to replace current crop of anti-comment spam plugins including Akismet plugin. We don't need any assistance to stop all robotic spam which constitutes over 99% of comment spams currently. The remaining (less than) 1% spams comes from spammers who take the time to visit your blog and manually submit spam comments. They are the hardest to catch (see the FAQ entry above for details). We have several pluglets in place to protect you from manually submitted spams too. Kismet is one such pluglet. It uses the Akisment service (separate from Akismet plugin which also uses the same service) to provide input in classifying a small percentage (read below for details) of the manually submitted spams. Kismet pluglet significantly improves upon the functionality of Akismet plugin. Unlike the Akismet plugin, Kismet allows you to assign score to its decision (success or failure) or outright reject the comment on failure (not recommended) or mark it as spam or send the comment to moderation queue etc.

Note: Akismet service is really a black-box as it doesn't reveal what factors it considers it making a decision and we have seen that it gives high rates of false positives (including marking the blogger himself, commenting on his own blog, as spam!) as well as false negatives as have other bloggers too. What we have done here is use Akismet's services as one of the many factors for decision making in less than 0.5 per cent of the cases (based on our tests) where other pluglets didn't take a direct decision and provided a score instead.

To use Akismet service you should get a free Akismet key, if you do not have it already, and update the Kismet plugin to enable checking for comment spam using Akismet service (not the plugin). You should however disable the Akismet plugin as it is not required anymore.

Can I test if my system / theme is compatible with Comment Guard Pro?

Absolutely. Please refer to Comment Guard Pro System Requirements section for details.

Do I need to do anything to make my theme compliant with Comment Guard Pro?

This entry is targeted for WordPress theme developers only. Comment Guard Pro users should refer to the previous entry for details.

Any standard WordPress theme should be compliant with Comment Guard Pro. Specifically Comment Guard Pro requires three tags in the template files:

1. <?php wp_head(); ?> in template header file (header.php in most theme) before the </head> tag.
2. <?php do_action('wp_footer'); ?> in template footer file (footer.php in most theme)
3. <?php do_action('comment_form', $post->ID); ?> in template comment form (comments.php in most theme)

Please see the template files in default theme if you are not sure where to place them. You can test your theme with the free Comment Guard Pro System Requirements Test plugin. It not only tests your theme, it will also tell you what corrections, if any, you may need to make.

The bottom-line is that we don't ask anything special from WordPress theme developers other than what is expected from a standard theme by WordPress itself.

Why Comment Guard Pro is not free ?

We spent enormous amount of time and effort to provide you with a high quality product. We need to charge you to allow us to spend resources to continue development on the product, provide updates and provide support. We stand fully behind our product and commit to provide 6 months of free support and lifetime of free updates.

Where can I report defects and get support?

Please report defects and support requests to Taragana Helpdesk. You can also use Comment Guard Pro forum to get help from other users and when you can help them too.

Overview

A Plugin to bounce back referrer spam attempts; requires no upfront configuration, no mod-rewrite. It is like the strong silent bouncer at your favorite club. Tested on all versions of WordPress.

It does one job and does it well. Enough said.

Background

We were trying to block referrer spammer’s from our blog sites. We saw few scripts, never a real WordPress Plugin which does the job without requiring you to configure anything or without requiring manual modification of core files. Also we want to manage the list of referrer domains without having to modify the source code. We were uncomfortable with Plugins, which requires modification of core WordPress code, because it forces you through painful upgrade procedures.

So we created Referrer Bouncer Plugin for WordPress 1.5x with the following simple requirements:

1. It should be simple to use.
2. It should be simple to install.
3. It should come pre-configured.
4. It should allow changing referrer information.
5. It should embed security measures against outsider modifications
6. It should require no manual intervention for day-to-day operations.

Referrer Bouncer Plugin is of the class of upload-activate-and-forget Plugins (like WordPress 1.5 Plugin to disable nofollow from comments), Plugins that simply work.

Note: If you find this plugin useful, please consider contributing to ensure development of more such plugins and maintenance.

Configuration

The Plugin doesn’t require any manual configuration to operate as it comes pre-configured with known list of referrer domains and sub-domains.

However if you feel that you still need to add/modify additional domains/sub-domains/words etc. you can do so from the links provided in the Plugin page. It documents all the procedure with appropriate links. Remember to first create the referer.txt file.

Notes:

1. After creating the referer.txt file you may want to fill it first with the default list. Creating your own referer.txt disables the default list. So if you do not fill it up with the default list or a list of your own, then no referrer blocking will be done.
2. Any changes are reflected in real-time.
3. After creating a default list you should disable the links to create/delete pages (again link provided in Plugin page).
4. The links to create/delete/disable does the job silently without providing any information whatsoever. If you want to verify their action, you can check in the wp-content directory. The create link creates referer.txt. The delete link deletes the file. The disable link creates a marker file (nrsetup.txt) which disables the create and delete link functions.
5. After disabling you can still modify the file, provided you have created it before.
6. You can re-enable creating and deleting functionality by manually deleting the nrsetup.txt file. This security is required to prevent any unauthorized person from tampering your referrer settings.

Download

You can specify your own domains, sub-domains in the list. You can also specify single words like poker. We advise against it because it would exclude valid referrer’s who may have poker as part of the URL like http://blog.example.com/why-poker-is-bad.

Do not leave any empty line in the file or empty spaces anywhere. We do not trim and do not check for empty lines because we just want the Plugin to be as fast as possible.Referrer Bouncer Plugin

Installation

1. Upload or move the Plugin file (noreferer.php) to your wp-content/Plugins directory.
2. Click Plugins from the main menu.
3. Scroll to find the name of the Plugin - Referrer Bouncer, and click Activate.

Uninstallation

1. Log in to WordPress.
2. Click Plugins from the main menu.
3. Scroll to find the name of the Plugin - Referrer Bouncer, and click Deactivate.

This disables the Plugin. You can also delete the noreferer.php file from wp-content/plugins directory and referer.txt (if created) from the wp-content directory for permanent removal.

Taragana Product License Agreement

Taragana owns all intellectual property in the software. Taragana products are not sold; rather, copies of Taragana products are licensed to the end user.

TAKING ANY STEP TO SET-UP OR INSTALL THE PRODUCT CONSTITUTES YOUR ASSENT TO AND ACCEPTANCE OF THIS END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT. WRITTEN APPROVAL IS NOT A PREREQUISITE TO THE VALIDITY OR ENFORCEABILITY OF THIS AGREEMENT AND NO SOLICITATION OF ANY SUCH WRITTEN APPROVAL BY OR ON BEHALF OF YOU SHALL BE CONSTRUED AS AN INFERENCE TO THE CONTRARY. IF YOU HAVE ORDERED THIS PRODUCT AND SUCH ORDER IS CONSIDERED AN OFFER BY YOU, Taragana’s ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR OFFER IS EXPRESSLY CONDITIONAL ON YOUR ASSENT TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, TO THE EXCLUSION OF ALL OTHER TERMS.

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Taragana hereby grants only to You, a non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable license to use the copy of the Product in accordance with the relevant end user documentation provided by Taragana. You have no right to receive, use or examine any source code or design documentation relating to the Product.

You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software product, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.

THE PRODUCT AND ANY SERVICES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. Taragana DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE PRODUCT WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS OR THAT ITS OPERATION WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. Taragana DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or limitations on how long an implied warranty may last, so the above limitations may not apply to You. This warranty gives You specific legal rights. You may have other rights which vary from state to state.

Limitation on Liability. IN NO EVENT WILL Taragana BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THIS AGREEMENT, THE PRODUCT OR ANY SERVICES UNDER ANY CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHER THEORY, FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOST PROFITS), OR FOR LOSS OF OR CORRUPTION OF DATA), OR FOR COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR TECHNOLOGY, IRRESPECTIVE OF WHETHER Taragana HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. Taragana’s MAXIMUM LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE LICENSE FEES RECEIVED BY Taragana UNDER THIS LICENSE FOR THE PARTICULAR PRODUCT(S) WHICH CAUSED THE DAMAGES. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to You.

THE PRODUCT IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPON SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE PRODUCT COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE (”HIGH RISK APPLICATIONS”). Taragana specifically disclaim any express or implied warranty of fitness for High Risk Applications.

Matrix of Translations Supported by Translator Plugin Gold

Translator Plugin Gold provides automatic machine translation in 32 languages for English language blogs. However for non-English language blogs, fewer languages may be available. Please refer to the table below for list of translations supported for your blog and information on translation engines supporting each language.

• Green and Yellow indicates that the language combination is supported.
• Yellow indicates that only limited amount of text can be translated by Engine4.
• Red indicates lack of translation support for that combination.
• N/A indicates irrelevant / not applicable language combinations like English to English.
• Use the scrollbar below to see all the languages.