I don’t get many comments on my posts. This probably down to both the content and frequency of my writing, which I accept. It’s got to be good and often. But over the past couple of months, I noticed an increase in the amount of sp*m hitting my account. I was used to seeing 3 or 4 sp*m comments a month. Askimet seemed to be catching most of the offending content, and it all ended up in my Spam folder. It was a worry, that on one day in August, there was a total of 270 ‘comments’ in my Spam folder. The majority of these actually hit on one day. I deleted them and logged out. Just over a week later, when I decided to write the post about the August Bank Holiday, I again was drawn to the sp*m issue, when I saw that my Spam folder now contained over 300 items. Askimet at work again. How can I stop this?

I did the usual Google search and checked the many WordPress forums with varying amounts of success. One of the more helpful ideas was to enable a certain setting that the poster said worked for her. She advised that users should require all

commenters to be registered users. This is found in the Discussion settings. I must admit, it seems to work as, since that day, there has been nothing pushed into my Spam folder. I’m not sure why I have not checked this setting before, but I suppose that the amount of junk I was getting before August was so low, that I did not worry about it.

My only worry now is that it might deter the casual reader. We shall have to see.