The ideal plugins to block IP access from spam bots

It can get very annoying when checking all the hits you receive on your Blog when there are intruder access bots in the way. Besides, you want to obtain “realistic” real-time stats on your Blog. There are ways to completely find out how many hits you really have and how they entered your Blog. With this information you can find in what areas you need to improve in order to improve and attract more readers. Askimet is the best spammer for WordPress Blogs, when it comes to comments but you need to tackle the spam bots. After searching around, I found 2 additional plugins that will finish them all and leave you in peace. If you install these two plugins then you will not have to worry anymore. You might get a little upset though, when you see less hits on your favorite analytical tool but you will be much more aware of your standing in the Blog world.

First install WP-Ban:

Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog.

It will display a custom ban message when the banned IP, IP range, host name or referer url trys to visit you blog. You can also exclude certain IPs from being banned. There will be statistics recordered on how many times they attemp to visit your blog. It allows wildcard matching too….Learn More

Once you install this just go to Settings> Ban and you can adjust it. Leave it as it is because it’s set at all the recommended levels. If you like, type in the IP addresses of the visitors you feel are suspicious. But then again, I suggest you wait until you finish downloading the 2nd plugin Bad Behavior:

Bad Behavior prevents spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place.

Welcome to a whole new way of keeping your blog, forum, guestbook, wiki or content management system free of link spam. Bad Behavior is a PHP-based solution for blocking link spam and the robots which deliver it.

Thousands of sites, large and small, like SourceForge, GNOME, the U.S. Department of Education, and many more, trust Bad Behavior to help reduce incoming link spam and malicious activity.

Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.

Bad Behavior also transcends other link spam solutions by working in a completely different, unique way. Instead of merely looking at the content of potential spam, Bad Behavior analyzes the delivery method as well as the software the spammer is using. In this way, Bad Behavior can stop spam attacks even when nobody has ever seen the particular spam before…..Learn more

Once you have both of these plugins installed on your WordPress Blog then everything will be set for you. Watch it in action, go to Tools > Bad Behavior and see all the Illegal Access Bots being blocked. It is important to note for recognition purposes, that Bad Behavior works directly and in conjunction with Project  Honey Pot. I deservedly added a permanent link to this Organization on the  sidebar.

The “About us link”:

Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.

To participate in Project Honey Pot, webmasters need only install the Project Honey Pot software somewhere on their website. We handle the rest — automatically distributing addresses and receiving the mail they generate. As a result, we anticipate installing Project Honey Pot should not increase the traffic or load to your website.

We collate, process, and share the data generated by your site with you. We also work with law enforcement authorities to track down and prosecute spammers. Harvesting email addresses from websites is illegal under several anti-spam laws, and the data resulting from Project Honey Pot is critical for finding those breaking the law…..Learn More

But there is another plugin which works with Project Honey Pot, it’s the AVH First Defense, I have not tested it but if you find it to be very helpful, please drop your thoughts off in the comment section right after this post:

The AVH First Defense Against Spam plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before any content is served.

The AVH First Defense Against Spam plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before any content is served by identifying them at the Project Honey Pot, a local blacklist or the local IP cache. Visitors trying to post a comment are checked at stopforumspam.com. Stop Forum Spam is not used to check before content is served due to the amount of requests, which overloads their infrastructure…..Learn More

You’re all set now, no more Spam Bots invading your WordPress Blog and real accuracy from your analytical tools.