Spam in Buddypress

If it comes to Spam in Buddypress, I’m sure nobody has a 100% solution to offer. Some users in this forum ask me for help, so I will let you know what I do.

It is a never ending story, but with a combination of different tricks and plugins, I have got my BuddyPress installations spam free.

If you have spam problems with your BuddyPress installation, hopefully,  this article helps you.

1. Rename the register page to something unique

Many bots just look for this page, if they cannot find it they can do nothing.

Add this line to your wp-config.php just above the
/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */
and change the register to something unique:

pre type="php"
define( ‘BP_REGISTER_SLUG’, ‘register’ );
/pre
For more info about about changing slugs go here http://codex.buddypress.org/extending-buddypress/customizing-labels-messages-and-urls/

2. Delete the WordPress/Buddypress credits from the footer

I know, we all like to support WordPress and BuddyPress, but robots will just search on Google for the string.

This is an easy way to find out BuddyPress installations.

You can read about this in the BuddyPress forums: http://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/buddypress-spam/

Plugins:

avh-first-defense-against-spam

This plugin checks if the IP adress is e.g. on a blacklist. It reduces a lot of spam. I have it running on huge sites with many spam problems, and it works.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/avh-first-defense-against-spam/

Check if the user is relay a humen

For this I use  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/block-spam-by-math-reloaded/ or
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-humanity/ as alternative for http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/super-capcha/

There are a lot more tweaks and plugins people recommend in the forums, but I’m not a friend of to many plugins, if it’s not needed.

For now I’m spam free, and I like less then more. If spam comes back I will add more.

If you follow these instructions, and still have spam, please let me know.

Like to know more? Recommended posts

…for .htaccess security:
http://wpmututorials.com/how-to/spam-blogs-and-buddypress/

BuddyPress forum “buddypress spam” recommendations from pcwriter

Sven Lehnert