Jim Dalrymple.com

Sometimes I feel pretty stupid—this week was one of those times. I’ve been running my server without Spam Assassin because I really didn’t need it. However, lately it’s become necessary, so I decided to set it up.

Right away it started picking up spam email and marking it correctly. Then it started marking emails spam that really wasn’t spam. So I setup the Junkmail and Notjunkmail email boxes so I could train the Bayesian filters.

But it didn’t really work. Then I realized that there was no cron job setup, so the damn thing wasn’t learning anything. I downloaded Spamtrainer ran the fixes and the rules and everything is running fine now.

Blog spam has become a real problem for all of those people that just want to post a few personal thoughts on the Web. For some, it has meant taking comments off their sites altogether. Luckily, the Wordpress community is very active and has a lot of good developers tackling this problem—the latest plugin I’m trying is called Bad Behavior.

Unlike a lot of the other plugins, Bad Behavior doesn’t require any interaction from the person making the post. For instance, you don’t need to require a special code be typed in or otherwise jump through hoops to make a post.

I was using a plugin called Bot Check that required a 5-digit code be typed in and it was very good. I had no trouble with it at all and would certainly recommend anyone having trouble with spam give it a try.

I like to test out all kinds of things server related, so I thought I’d give Bad Behavior a try and see how it works. I had this site up for a few days before I started reciving spam, so I know it’s out there—let’s see how this does.

If you find yourself blocked for some reason, please let me know.