Spam url block

Thsi is actually a native feature of the WordPress commenting system.

Go into Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation

…and enter a number here:

Hold a comment in the queue if it contains [enter a number] or more links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.)

I also recommend the Bad Behavior plug-in, in addition.

Oh wait – I think I misunderstood your question! Let me do a little more research.

The problem I see is that legitimate users also use the URL field, so using that field alone as a basis for weeding out spammers is perhaps not going to work.

I’ve also heard good things about SI CAPTCHA plug-in.

Thank’s for your help, I’ve used the Bad Behaviour plugin in the past but it didn’t stop the spam. AVH worked at first but now the spam is back.

The only thing that worked recently was the two above and spamfree but I obviously don’t want to use that any more as it could be a security risk.

I’ve got comments with links to be held in the moderation queue at the moment which seems to be the only way apart from a captcha. I wanted to avoid using a captcha as people were put off by it before.

I’ve currently got the URL field hidden via the css so it wouldn’t matter to me if this wasn’t there. If there is anyway to stop the comment if this field had been filled I think that would solve my problem.

IIRC if you put ‘moderate comments with X links’ to 1, it SHOULD catch them all. That’s in General settings -> Discussion.