A new WordPress plugin called G.A.S.P. (Growmap Anti-Spambot Plugin) is being hailed as the replacement for Akismet and offers better filtering of comments marked as spam.

The Bane of False Positives

If you run a popular site, you are already well aware that spammers enjoy leaving you tons of generic and bogus comments in an effort to get links to their site in front of your loyal following. Akismet does a great job of filtering them out but, unfortunately, it also flags legitimate comments as spam too. You could waste hours every week sorting through the list for the few good comments you want to approve.

No More CAPTCHA

Well, a new plugin is in town and it promises to put a stop to all that. Not only does it give fewer false positives, it blocks spam that Akismet was letting through. It also does away with the CAPTCHA element, which is that goofy character box that you have to retype before you can submit your comment. It’s replaced with a simple checkbox that spoils the efforts of a spam bot as well or better than CAPTCHA.

The Set Up

If you decide to install G.A.S.P., be sure to deactivate Akismet first and then remove it. Then you can begin using G.A.S.P. with no trouble or conflicts.

Nothing’s Perfect

Of course, no spam filter can completely eliminate spammers who manually enter their comments and check all of the boxes just right. But, G.A.S.P. promises to help the good comments get through and not falsely accuse your good followers of being listed as spammers.