Ask HN: How to prevent comment spam on personal blog?

3 points·rishikeshs··8 comments

I’m trying to build my own comment system on my personal blog. Currently the backend is Google App Script(but moving to a Flask backend!), but I’m getting a lot of comment spam!

Are there any open-source comment spam protection like Akismet!

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I have essentially never[0] had open comments on any of my own[1] sites since ~1995[2] since it is too much work to prevent and always has been.

[0] For a brief interval I did try.

[1] With CAPTCHAs and other complex rules such as manually approving new users, preventing insertion of links within the first few posts, etc, and multiple attentive moderators, sites that I have helped moderate/admin have managed to keep SPAM count low.

[2] One such site page: https://www.exnet.com/springboard.html

Yes! It’s horrible! I wish I could figure out a way. Does Recaptcha by google work?

All the hurdles together generally worked: I doubt that CAPTCHA on its own is enough these days.

Put it on a Cloudflare free plan or just add Disqus?

I don’t like Disqus! It’s too bloated.

What do you mean by putting it on Cloudflare?

Cloudflare's web application firewall adds various kinds of bot detection and blocking. It's one layer of defense against spam, but not as good as content based blocking like Akismet.

Interesting, mine[1] is a static site hosted on cloudflare pages. Not sure how to implement this firewall though.

[1]https://rishikeshs.com

It's in your dashboard, set up the security settings and such. Or check their docs or ask their support.

The WAF stuff is actually their core product, what they started with long before Pages became a thing.

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