Which is your correct anti-spam for comments plugin?

Formspammertrap for comments (FST-C) was the initial implementation of the techniques used in the main (non-WP) FormSpammerTrap (FST) (available free at https://www.FormSpammerTrap.com ) . I used the techniques in FST to allow FST-capabilities in a WP comment form.

FST-C has additional features that allow you to customize the comment form area – heading, fields, text before/after the form, etc. It is fairly effective, but the latest FST techniques aren’t in FST-C. I probably should add those latest techniques.

FST also has lots of customization features that are built for contact forms, rather than just for comments.

But the standalone FST has instructions on how to make a template page using FST. That requires a bit of template-creation knowledge, but the instructions are in the FST files you get from the site.

The Block Comment Spam Bots (BCSB) plugin is built to block spammers from using manual ‘posting’ of the comment form via something like CURL. It’s a simpler version of FST-C without the additional features of FST-C. BCSB is very effective in blocking automated CURL-like submissions to your contact form. Maybe even more effective than FST-C.

BCSB also puts less ‘load’ on the database, as it does it’s thing before writing to the database. So you don’t even see the blocked comments in the database as blocked. They just never get to the database.

As to which to use? I use FST-C along with BCSB (even though FST-C is not as current as FST). Together they are quite effective at blocking bot submissions to your comment form. I also use templates I create using FST for ‘contact me’ forms. That is quite effective in blocking contact form spam.

Hope this helps. If there was a great demand, I’d spend the time combining (and updating) all of them into one plugin. But there isn’t – and other projects I am working on have higher priority. (Like my “CellarWeb Privacy and Security” plugin that makes a site more secure.)

So I can use FST-C along with BCSB? Don’t they do the same thing under the hood?

They both use the same techniques on the comment form. The FST-C allows you to further customize your comment form with messages/text/etc.

BCSB just blocks bots with the same techniques. But no customization of the comment form ‘look/feel’. Some people have already done that with other plugins, so BCSB just blocks bots.

Just updated BCSB yesterday to fix a couple of bugs.

If you have comment spam, BCSB will stop it in it’s tracks. If you want to customize the comment form and block bot spam, then use FST-C.

I think that BCSB is more effective in stopping bot comments, though. On one site, I still could get comments that were moved into the ‘spam’ category. On that site, I installed BCSB, and there were no comments in the ‘spam’ category. Stopped them immediately.

Another advantage is the BCSB does it’s blocking before the ‘write’ to the database, so less database impact wit BCSB.

So, BCSB for basic blocking. If you want to customize your comment form and get bot blocking, use FST-C. Although using both will work just fine – BCSB is more ‘newer’ than FST-C.

So interception wise FST-C does the same things as BCSB, but they do not interfere with each other?

If so, would it be fair to say that ‘FST-C’ is really ‘BCSB + comment form customisation’? Perhaps you could call it ‘ BCSB+’ to make it clearer?

As for using FST-C to modify the comment form, I’d re-code the template, so BCSB will do me just fine ??

Update: FormSpammerTrap for Comments (FST4C) version 4.00 was released today. Lots of chnages; see the readme for the change log.

As to usage, and it’s relationship to our Block Comment Spam Bots (BCSB):

– use BCSB for basic comment spam protection
– use FS54C for additional customization of the comment form elements and content. Note that not all themes support full customization of the comment form elements.

Both plugins use the latest FormSpammerTrap (version 14) which was released last week. FST version 14 includes a ton of features, including improved instructions for creating a FST template page for WP sites. See https://www.FormSpammerTrap.com for details.

Hope this helps….. Thanks for your support!

…Rick…