Fight SPAM in WordPress with Antispam Bee

Hello friends,

Do you want to have spammy WordPress websites? No? I thought so! So the main question now is how to fight SPAM correctly? There are various ways of doing this. In this post I have chosen to review one of the popular plugins for that purpose.

Presenting Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee may be just the tool that will help you to fight SPAM for your WordPress website.

What is the risk of getting SPAM hits for WordPress?

From moderate to high (at least in my opinion). A non-protected WordPress website is a potential target for comment SPAM and trackback SPAM. That is why it is always a good idea to have a tool that can deal with these hits.

How does Antispam Bee help me fight SPAM for my WordPress website?

This wonderful plugin will be able to deal with the average SPAM – comments and trackbacks. Antispam Bee does this without the need to have captchas. Also this plugin is ad-free and also completely free of charge to use. What is more important is that it complies with the European data privacy standards. So you can be confident that you are getting a great solution that will aid you in your battle with SPAM. And it will do this effectively.

How to use Antispam Bee?

Download and install the plugin. Then activate it. After this you can adjust some settings in the WordPress admin panel.

What are the features of Antispam Bee?

This plugin can help with comment approval and if you have approved a comment for any commenter then they are listed as trusted. Also if your commenter has a Gravatar then they are also trusted.

Antispam Bee takes comment time into consideration. Therefore if too many comments are posted within a short amount of time then this is a sign for SPAM.

Having trouble with SPAM comments from various languages? Don’t worry anymore! Antispam Bee can be set to monitor for comments in certain language only. This ensures that only comments from your target audience can appear on your WordPress website. Speaking of this – the plugin can block or allow comments based on their geographical location. This means that you can choose which countries are considered as accepted and only comments from them will be shown.

Antispam Bee can treat BBCode as spam. This plugin can also validate the IP from which a comment is posted and block it in case of suspicion. Antispam Bee also uses regular expressions and can search in a local SPAM database for comments that have been previously marked as spammy. This can be matched against a public database as well in order to ensure protection.

Want to know if you are getting SPAM hits? Antispam Bee can notify you and your other admins by email. Want to delete SPAM comments after a couple of days automatically? Antispam Bee can be instructed to do this in your desired amount of days. You can also limit approval for only comments and pings. But beware that this instructs Antispam Bee to delete any other comment types automatically.

This plugin also selects SPAM indicators that will help it determine a comment as SPAM and delete it directly. You can set Antispam Bee for some optional features as well. For example you may want to exclude trackbacks and pingbacks from potential SPAM detection and you can also check comments on your archive pages (if you have enabled them).

Last but not least – Antispam Bee can provide detailed statistics in your WordPress dashboard.

What else do I need to know about using Antispam Bee?

This plugin may not be compatible with other comment solutions besides the default WordPress comment system.

Another important feature is that Antispam Bee does not contain any paid services or limitations.

For other information and questions please make sure that you have read the FAQ section of the WordPress.org page of the plugin.

So what do you think friends? Will you use Antispam Bee for your website? Share any thoughts and questions in the comment section below and spread the word about this post in social media.

Thank you and see you soon!

MailChimp for WordPress – review

Hello friends,

Email marketing is an extremely important channel to attract visitors and customers to your website. There are many solutions that will allow you to gain subscribers for your email lists. However one tool seems to stand out from the crowd as it has proven its functionality to a great amount of WordPress users.

This plugin is called MailChimp for WordPress and in this post I will make a review on its free version.

What is MailChimp?

If you are a beginner you may have never heard of MailChimp and that is OK. However all digital marketing veterans are quite familiar with what it does. MailChimp is an online solution that will allow you to achieve several actions.

First of all it will allow you to attract email subscribers. You will be able to organize them in lists and you will even be able to add an already created lists so that they can be used with MailChimp.

Second – you will be able to create stylish email newsletters. This is not only easy, but also extremely fun! All you have to do is drag&drop the components, adjust their settings a little and then save the newsletter.

Third – you will be able to send your newsletters to your email subscribers with just one click. But that’s not all, friends! You will also get statistics what has happened with the emails that you have sent.

MailChimp comes in several pricing plans, but there is also a free plan that is recommended for smaller audiences (below 2000 subscribers).

What is MailChimp for WordPress?

The name just says it all – this is the plugin that connects your WordPress website with your MailChimp account so that you can subscribe your visitors into your email marketing lists with ease and confidence.

With this plugin you can add various sign-up methods and gain more and more subscribers. MailChimp for WordPress allows you to add great looking opt-in forms to your website. What is more important is that you will be able to use this plugin with many other form solutions for WordPress. The integration with them is seamless. Currently MailChimp for WordPress supports:

• Contact Form 7 – the famous free solution for great looking contact forms;
• WooCommerce – the mighty plugin that transforms any WordPress website to a powerful e-commerce platform;
• Ninja Forms – another awesome form solution for WordPress;
• Easy Digital Downloads – the digital selling solution for WordPress;
• Events Manager;
• BuddyPress – the community plugin for WordPress;
• The default WordPress Comment and Registration forms;

Big list, right? These are the most commonly used plugins and tools (of this type) for WordPress and that is why this plugin supports them.

MailChimp for WordPress also supports various add-ons that will increase its power. For example you may add the premium version that will add multiple forms with AJAX, ecomerce360 integration support, email notifications, styling options for your forms, improved and detailed reports and statistics regarding your newsletter campaigns and many other features.

Another add-on for MailChimp for WordPress is the MailChimp top bar that adds an opt-in form in the top bar of your WordPress website. If you want to see the activity on your lists then you should install the MailChimp activity add-on. There is also an user sync solution, a captcha solution, box pop-up add-on and the third party tool WPBruiser which is a powerful anti-spam protection system.

MailChimp for WordPress comes with detailed documentation. The knowledge base of the plugin is updated daily so that you can find the answer to any question.

How to use MailChimp for WordPress?

First of all you need to install and activate the plugin. You can get it from the WordPress installer or download it from its WordPress.org page. Then you need to setup the checkbox settings for the plugin by selecting where to place it – i.e. whether or not to integrate it with the described above forms solutions. Then you have to define the label text for this checkbox. You should think of something catchy so that users will be willing to click on it. Then you have to choose whether or not you want it to be checked by default. This might be great for attracting new subscribers but it is also risky as some of the visitors might not detect the checkbox and might feel misleaded. I’d personally leave it unchecked but it’s up to you.

Also you can choose to load some default CSS or not.

You need to add your MailChimp API key as well in order to make the connection between your plugin and this service.

You can also add additional fields using the plugin’s form builder:

Then all you have to do is enjoy the increase of subscribers for your newsletter lists.

You can find out more about this plugin by watching the following video:

And that’s it friends. Would you give this plugin a try? Share your opinion on the matter in our comment form below. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this review in social media.

Thank you and see you soon!

*The images are embedded from the WordPress.org page of the plugin

Why you should use Jetpack for WordPress

Hello friends,

In this post I will present to you one extremely popular solution for WordPress. It is called Jetpack and here you will find out several reasons why you should give it a try for your website.

What is Jetpack?

The short answer is a WordPress plugin. However it is not just any regular plugin – it is a complete booster for any self-hosted website (downloaded from WordPress.org).

It provides you with many modules that are absolutely free for use. You can activate all of them or just choose the ones that you really need. And there are some of them that are absolutely necessary for any WordPress website.

Jetpack is 100% free and all you have to do is just download it, install it, activate it and login with your WordPress.com account. And if the modules and their functionalities are not enough for you, you can always consider a premium upgrade that will provide you with even more power.

That’s great, but what is this WordPress.com account for Jetpack? I thought that it was a solution for the WordPress.org websites?

And that is correct! It is a solution for the self-hosted variant of our beloved WordPress, however it provides it with all the great features from the WordPress.com solution for free. That’s why you need an account for it. You can create one for free. It is not needed to create a blog there – just an account. Then after you have installed Jetpack you will be able to connect your website with that account and start using the powerful features of the plugin.

OK – which Jetpack modules do I really need?

I will answer this question with a question – How much power do you want for your website? If the answer is “as more as possible” then you should activate as much modules as possible.

However having too much power isn’t always the optimal solution. So my advice is to check out all modules and then select the ones that will provide you with the features that your website is lacking.

While you are considering what to choose, I will help you with a hint – there are 7 modules that are very needed so you might want to start with them.

Module 1 – WordPress Stats

This an absolute must-have. This is an analytics solution that will provide you with information on the activity of all non-logged-in users. All you have to do is to be logged in your administrator account and then view your stats. This solution will provide additional information so it is absolutely OK to have it running alongside with your Google Analytics account. The more data you have – the better.

Module 2 – Publicize

This module will automatically ping your social services (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and will post the new content on your behalf.

Module 3 – Sharing

This is an absolute must-have for your WordPress website. I have already reviewed it in details in this post, so go ahead and find out why you need it.

Module 4 – Contact forms

Every modern website needs contact forms. And here you have a complete functionality absolutely for free. So why don’t you give it a try?

Module 5 – Jetpack comments

This is another must-have. It improves the default WordPress comment system and allows your visitors to either comment with their accounts on your website, or to log in using social media and then comment. Of course you can allow them to write their e-mail and name and comment without registration or a social media profile as well.

In my opinion this module also helps reduce spam comments. However if you want even better protection the premium upgrades of Jetpack are there for you.

Module 6 – The Jetpack mobile theme

I used to love one non-responsive theme. It looks great, however Google did not liked it while it was not mobile-friendly. So I had to change it. But while struggling to choose a new theme and decide on its design I had to stay with the old non-responsive one. And what saved my ranks and provided my visitors with mobile visits was the Jetpack’s mobile theme. It is absolutely simple to activate and use. And if you like keeping things simple you may find the combination of any non-responsive theme and Jetpack’s module to be absolutely great and efficient. It basically transfers any mobile-unfriendly website to a mobile-friendly one.

Module 7 – Photon

Speed is another very important SEO factor. And to improve it you have to start by optimizing your images. Now, you will find some articles here that I have written about image optimization. But no matter what you do, you will find out that having a CDN is probably the most favorable solution. And Jetpack provides you with such option in the form of its free Photon module. It will make your website faster, so you can consider giving it a try.

And these are the 7 modules that you should start with. You may also consider the following ones as well:

• Infinite Scroll
• Tiled Layouts
• Carousel
• Extra Sidebar Widgets
• Enhanced Distribution
• Shortcode Embeds

So, dear friends, that is why you should use Jetpack for WordPress. What do you think? Please share any questions or feedback in the comments below.

See you soon!

Custom login page for WordPress

Do you intend to allow new user registration for your WordPress website? In this case each of your users will have to pass through the default login screen before they reach their dashboard.

Well it is stable and efficient, but let’s be honest – it looks boring. And now face the fact that each WordPress website has this very same login screen. This might be confusing for new users and also it might seem unprofessional to the old and more demanding ones.

So the only possible solution is to change the default WordPress login screen to something that will make you stand out from the crowd. Something unique that will express the true idea behind your website and will predispose the users to gladly login and use it. You do want this to happen, right?

So here are some absolutely great solutions to achieve this without any problems: (PS: They are FREE!)

BM Custom Login

Let’s start with something small but extremely efficient. This plugin will allow you to create a beautiful custom login page with a background and color settings of your choice. All you have to do is install and activate it and then go to “Settings” -> “Custom Login” to make the desired changes to your login screen. When you are done you just have to click on Save and that’s it! Now it’s time to enjoy your new login screen.

A5 Custom Login Page

OK – now to the heavy artillery of the solutions for an outstanding custom login for WordPress. This plugin is the first of them. It provides multiple options and settings and thus you will be able to add custom logo, custom background colour and also apply different CSS effects on your new login screen. The results are just awesome and this plugin will eventually allow you to copy an entire stylesheet into it so that you will have the ultimate freedom regarding the design of your login page. With the current options of you will be able to style it according to your needs and furthermore you will be able to redirect the different WP user roles to different pages after logging in. Absolutely great!

WP Custom Login

But what if you do want something different but in the meantime you want to keep it simple and clean? What if your perfect vision for a custom login page is the form added as a part of your theme’s design? Well this easy to use plugin is the right tool for the job. If you are one of those users who want to include the footer and the header of their WordPress theme for the login page, then you are definitely going to love using WP Custom Login!

Sexy Login

Do you want your website to be sexy? Well you do have to tweak your design a little bit in order to achieve this. And since the login page is part of this design you have to make it look sexy as well. So here is the ultimate solution for this purpose. The Sexy Login plugin will create a widget for your WordPress and you can place it on a custom page that will have the design you desire. This tool is ideal for websites that would like to avoid the default login page. Sexy Login uses AJAX and jQuery effects. But in case your visitors are using javascript-disabled browsers, the plugin is equipped with a fallback mechanism for them.

My WordPress Login Logo

But what if you only want to use your logo on the default login page instead of the WordPress logo? Well here is the plugin for you! Simple and efficient. All you have to do is add the URL of the logo in the settings for this plugin and then log out and enjoy it. Bear in mind that this solution has not been recently updated, but there are no negative reviews regarding its functionality.

But what if you want to allow your users to login by using their social media profiles? Then simply install and activate the Social Login plugin.

It will allow your users to comment and login with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Paypal, LinkedIn, Instagram, OpenID, VKontakte, Google, Yahoo. With this plugin the login option is placed on the registration page, the login page and in every comment form. And when we are speaking of a custom brand design – Social Login allows you to add your own logo.

And ladies and gentlemen, last but not least – the ultimate login page redesign weapon: Erident Custom Login and Dashboard

This is the top rated plugin for customizing not only the login page but the WordPress dashboard as well. You can add your logo, change the images, the background colours – you name it! With Erident Custom Login and Dashboard you can just let your imagination go wild!

With this plugin you can brand your website completely and thus make your users feel right at home. But it also works for its performance and thus it is now faster and better.

You get  CSS options to change the background, solutions for a custom logo upload and form design. The plugin provides two unique features and they are the jQuery Colour Picker and a tool to change footer text on the admin dashboard.

So this is it friends! I hope that you will find the most suitable free WordPress plugin for your new login page design among these ones.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Disqus and Jetpack comments for WordPress

Let’s return on the topic for the WordPress comment system. We already know the benefits of having Facebook comments on your website as well as the solution to add this functionality. Now I will talk about two other options.

One of them is called Disqus which is an externally added comment system and the other one is Jetpack Comments which improves the functionality of the core WordPress comment system.

Let’s begin with Disqus. First of all I’d like to explain why you might want to have this solution as your main WordPress comment system.

Disqus is a great platform. It combines discussions from all over the world wide web and you can easily find a conversation about a topic that you find interesting and of course join it. This service is used by many websites (hundreds of thousands, according to the Disqus help pages). Adding Disqus to your website will allow you to integrate a modern comment system with many features. Additional bonus is the full social network integration of Disqus. Worry about SPAM? Well… don’t be! Disqus comes with a powerful administration and moderation features so that you can fight the spammy comments with style.

But the main reason why you’d want to have it as your main WordPress comment system is that this will create a community around your content. And you want this to happen! Integrating Disqus will add your website in its platform and therefore you may attract more traffic from visitors that use Disqus. We are speaking of a community from over 60 million profiles and a vast number of global conversations. So you can imagine why you might want to attract users from this platform to comment on your website and possibly start a conversation regarding your content.

Disqus is also aiding the performance of your WordPress site. Having too many comments in your own database might slow down your page loading speed. But if you are using external comments systems like Disqus you can remove this burden since the comments simply won’t load from your database and thus your speed will be improved. Also if someone tries to hack your comments you can be sure that you can be safe as any hack attack has to pass through Disqus first and the platform is well protected. Also you can import/export comments which is very important but we’ll go back on this functionality later.

If you are interested in more information about Disqus (and I know that you are) you can find out more about the network and the comment system in the official help pages.

OK so now you know the important benefits of using Disqus as your main WordPress comment system. But how to integrate it?

First of all you need to install and activate the official Disqus WordPress plugin. It is called Disqus Comment System. Bear in mind that it is important to make a complete backup of your database (I’d make a backup of the files as well – better safe than sorry) before you continue with the integration of Disqus.

Now if everything was correct you should have the plugin installed and activated and a new subsection in your WordPress admin panel should be added. It is under Comments and is called Disqus. A note about WordPress 2.0 users: You should look for Options -> Disqus.

Then you need a Disqus account. Create one and in the plugin’s options add your username and password. After this choose the website that you are adding comments to from the list of your websites. If you haven’t added your website you may do this from a link in the options menu. And that’s it. Now you can moderate your comments by going to Comments -> Disqus. You can also import old WordPress comments to Disqus and what is more important – you can export comments as well. This is a major advantage since you do not need to depend on any external comment system for your comments in case you are considering a switch to another one.

The Disqus plugin is well supported and if you have any troubleshooting with your theme or a conflict between plugins then you can be aided on time.

Now – let’s return to the core WordPress comment system and see how to make it better by using Jetpack.

Jetpack will help you by reducing SPAM and adding additional functionality to the core WordPress comment system such as the ability to comment using:

• WordPress.com account
• Twitter account
• Facebook account
• Google+ account

This saves time and effort to fill in additional details. This is one of the options, the other is to allow the user to enter their email, name and Website to comment so it is a good idea to mark some of these fields as required.

As for the social media integration – the users will be asked to allow access to the WP.com apps for the respective social media. This might be considered for a con.

To use the Jetpack Comment system you need to install, activate Jetpack itself and then from the plugin’s settings you need to activate the comment functionality. This will add additional options to the main settings for the core WordPress comment system under Settings -> Discussion.

So this is it, friends. It’s up to you to decide!

Facebook Comments for WordPress

Having a fully functional commenting system for your WordPress site is imperative!

There are many reasons why this is a must but for now let’s focus mainly on building relationships with your audience by speaking to them via the comments. This will definitely help your reputation and will lead to more traffic and followers. Knowing how to handle positive and negative comments and how to respond to each of them is vital but this is a topic that will be discussed later on.

Let’s get back on the need for a fully functional commenting system.

WordPress has one which could be useful by tweaking it a little bit. But this solution could be complex and if you want your visitors to be able to share their opinion on your content as fast and as easy as possible then you will need another option. Starting from this post I will present to you several ways of integrating different comment solutions for WordPress as well as improving the default commenting system.

In this article I am going to explain to you how you can integrate Facebook comments for your WordPress website and why you would want to do this in the first place.

Actually let’s start with the latter. The main reason why you will want this is because you want your visitors to feel great when they are browsing your website. This means that if they want to comment something they should be able to do this instantly without any additional actions. And while most of them are logged in Facebook as they are searching for useful information on the web they will benefit of having the ability to comment directly using their own personal profile. Also the Comment box is similar in terms of design and functionality to the Facebook comments on the social media itself. Thus the visitors will be familiar with the functionality of the commenting system on your WordPress website and will feel comfortable using it. And what is more important – no additional registrations, no extra passwords to remember, no extra personal data to be submitted, etc. But wait there’s more – they will be notified of new comments in Facebook and they will be able to return to your website to re-join the conversation which will result in extra traffic for your website.

The next reason why you would integrate Facebook Comments in WordPress is because this commenting system will lead to virality for your content. Each visitor may choose to share their comment in Facebook as well and this will end up sharing your post/page as well.

We’re not done yet, friends! There’s more! Having Facebook Comments on WordPress will help your content also by increasing its credibility. Why? Because this reduces the fake comments to a minimum since most of the Facebook users will have their own profile picture and name set for their accounts and therefore everyone can see that the comment came from a real person.

OK, so currently we have the following reasons to choose Facebook Comments as a commenting system for WordPress: improved usability, extra social traffic, virality and credibility. What is missing? Ah, yes! SPAM! You don’t want spammy comments for your website, right? Then you have to take care of it somehow. The Facebook Comment system will do this for you since the administration of the social media is fighting with SPAM and fake accounts on a daily basis. So you will have one of the most SPAM-free commenting systems there is.

So with this I am more than sure that you are wondering how to integrate Facebook Comments in WordPress. So let’s focus on this.

There are many plugins that will do the trick for the task at hand. The problem is that many of them are not working correctly or might not fit into your theme design. Either way this is something that is not desired so I am not going to lie to you that the best way to integrate Facebook comments is by visiting the Facebook Developers page and generate the code for the social plugin by yourself. Then place this comment in the respective theme file so that i will show exactly where you want this to happen and voila – you are done!

However this may be hard for beginners that is why I am going to present a solution that I have tested on some of my websites and I know that it functions correctly. It is called Facebook Comments and it is a simple to use plugin. All you need is a Facebook app ID that you can easily create on the Facebook Apps page. Actually you will need this for all the solutions regarding Facebook comments that is why it is important. Now go through the app creation process fill in the necessary details and link the app to your website by choosing Website as the desired platform for the app and finally you will be presented with your app ID which you have to paste in the Facebook Comment plugin settings. Then choose the moderators for your comments. You may assign some of your friends as well.

Each comment on your WordPress website will result in a Facebook notification and this will allow you to easily moderate the comments. You may allow them as public, delete or hide them with ease. In the plugin’s setting you will find a link to the Facebook moderation tool for your app. Also this plugin provides a great set of options so that you can end up having a perfectly fit and functioning Facebook Commenting system for your website.

Finally I’d like to inform you that if you have entered your app ID in any other plugins and it is present in the Open Graph Protocol code you should not enter it once again for this plugin as it will lead to duplicate lines. So ignore the plugin’s error messages that you have not entered your app ID and proceed using it. It will work.

If you have any questions – feel free to ask in the comments below. Which is your favorite commenting system for WordPress?

See you again friends!