The MicroWeb Blog Community has some spam protection plugins available for your use. Select the Plugins tab, and browse through the plugins that are available.

Bad Behavior will stop most automated spam. It may interefere with trackbacks, so test it out (it does on one of our blogs, not on another). It is a favorite with us though for stopping automated spam and automated harvesting spambots. You’ll want to activate it if you choose to use it, then go into Options, and click on the Bad Behavior tab there, and set the settings for it.

Akismet is also a spam protection plugin. You have to get an API key from the company that produces the plugin - it is free. An API key is just a code that you plug into the plugin to activate it. I have never used it, so I cannot vouch for it, but it is one of the more respected spam plugins.

There are many others, which can be found at WordPress.org. If you would like to use one from WordPress.org which is not installed here, you may contact us and ask us to install it. If we do, it will then be available for your use, and for the use of every other blogger in our community.

It is important that you understand that automated spam protection is never 100% accurate. They can, and do, stop a good deal of automated comment and trackback spam, and a good deal of the automated spam harvesting bots. But they cannot stop everything without also running a very high risk of stopping legitimate traffic or search engine bots. So we strike a balance, and stop MOST of it, which will cut it down to a manageable level. This is just the nature of blogging at this time.