This guide details the possible actions to combat unwanted content that may appear on your WordPress site when it is not sufficiently protected.

Introduction

• When your WordPress site is not sufficiently protected or monitored, spam bots take advantage of the comment system to post thousands of messages (obviously containing links to their fraudulent activities).
• Any form (contact, voting, booking, etc.) can also be exploited for malicious activities if nothing is done in advance to protect against it.
• This will affect your site (no one will leave a serious comment), the reputation of the domain name, your activities and the server itself to the point of saturating it and impacting other sites on the same space.
• It is therefore crucial to take care of your site's health and ensure its proper functioning throughout its lifespan.

Fighting unwanted comments

First, carefully follow the solutions proposed by the WordPress codex. You will learn, for example, that disabling the comment system via the WordPress dashboard only affects future posts; it is therefore important to follow one of the alternative methods proposed by WordPress for a more radical deactivation.

If you still want to collect comments, you can for example limit them to registered users (refer to the official help regarding the comments settings page) but you will then need to monitor registrations.

Fighting spam submissions

An effective protection against automated comments and the exploitation of any form on your site involves implementing a captcha, or its alternative, the honeypot (honey pot). You will thus close the door to bots (robots programmed to browse the Web and exploit its vulnerabilities).

Akismet, developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, receives good reviews but becomes paid for commercial use.

By installing WordPress on your Infomaniak site via the automatic installation system, you will find the WP Armour – Honeypot Anti Spam extension already activated, to protect in its free version all types of forms, such as those of WP Comments, WP Registration, BBPress Forum, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Elementor Forms, Divi Theme Contact Form, WooCommerce Reviews Pro, etc.

If you want an alternative dedicated solely to the contact form Contact Form 7, add its protective Honeypot extension.

Another extension receives many favorable reviews: La Sentinelle antispam !

The role of the hoster

You can learn more about the mechanisms put in place by Infomaniak to combat this issue through the article and the FAQ about the tools available if you have a website.‍