Check Your Spam: 3 Tips & PSA

Spam comments aren’t just annoying—they’re potentially dangerous and a strain on our system. Read more to find out how you can do your part to keep OpenCUNY safe and running smoothly!

1. Do not approve any spam comments.

Approving spam comments could give hackers access to OpenCUNY and cause major system problems. Comments with lots of links to other sites or comments attempting to sell things are usually bad news. Only approve comments that are clearly written and respond to the information in your post.

2. Check your site for spam comments frequently & empty your spam filter.

When you log in to your site’s dashboard there is a helpful “At a Glance” box that shows some basic site info, including a comment count. You should check how many comments you have regularly – don’t let your comment count get too high! By going to your comments page you can view pending and approved comments as well comments that have been flagged as spam.  You should always go into the spam comments and click the “Empty Spam” button to make sure your site doesn’t become home to a ton of spam comments.

3. Learn more about how to prevent spam comments.

a. Tweak your settings. (Settings>Discussion)

From the Settings menu in your site’s dashboard you can access Discussion options which will allow you to change the comment settings on your site. On this page you have the ability to change how comments are posted to your site, how long a post will remain open for comments, and which comments should get flagged as possible spam.

b. Install additional plugins on high-volume sites.

If you have a site that gets lots of visits and comments, you could consider adding an extra step to deter bots and crawlers. Captcha plugins (i.e. Sweet Captcha) prevent bots from posting comments or filling out contact forms. Not all of them are accessible to people with visual impairments so keep that in mind when picking your plugin.

Check out 5 Tips for Maintaining Your OpenCUNY Site for more information on best practices for website maintenance.