Avoid Spam User Registration in WordPress

From being just a blogging site to plenty of entrepreneurs trying to create a website for their business, WordPress seems to have come all the way long.

And that’s the reason why there have been countless instances of spammers trying to spread malicious code into people’s websites. The following post emphasizes on different ways to avoid spam user registration in WordPress.

Creating a successful website on WordPress now seems to be a milestone for each one of us; after all the little bird is flying out of the nest to make it big in the world.

However, we all know that it won’t be easy especially when filled with tons of hurdles along the way. All you require doing is think very carefully and come to a conclusion of your every move before you play it.

Tell me something have you ever tried playing a game of poker? If so, I am sure you will know what I am talking about. WordPress being so popular among the world, by now I hope you must be having your fair share of encounters with spam user registrations.

Any website do require visitors to create accounts that enhance interaction and communication to the next level. So, there are times (especially a lot of times) spam bots go about creating spam accounts on less secure websites.

And I must say they are extremely downright irritating which end up cluttering up all your user database, attempt to exploit vulnerabilities and reduce your website’s performance.

So now the question is can these spam user registrations on your WordPress website(s) can be handled for good or not? Fortunately, there is! Further below I would like to mention certain ways which can be used to combat such a spam situation.

1. Enabling Subscriber

As soon as you enable the subscriber as the default user; you will be able to prevent your website from different spammers. Find the setting on the WordPress website itself. Just unchecked the membership option and check “anyone can register” button.

As soon as you do this, it will be possible for anyone creating an account on your website but he or she will not be able to access the form until and unless you give the permission on a manual basis.

2. Use plugins that have been specifically created to detect and remove registration Spam

In case, you are someone who likes plugins to do the work for you; here are certain user registration spam barring plugins to take into account:

Stop spammer’s plugin- A highly aggressive spam fighting plugin, Stop Spammers’ performs over 20 checks to detect Spam.

Stop sign up plugin- I would call it a smart registration spam combat plugin, you know why? Because at one hand it blocks IPs that have been reported to Stop Forum Spam, hence cutting down the spam registrations on a membership website.

3. Killing spam with CAPTCHAs

Being simple to test, killing spam user registration in WordPress becomes way easy. In addition to this, you will be able to find that the visitor is a robot or a human.

It may quite interest you to know that their tests are highly impressive. For that, you have to install CAPTCHA plugins like reCAPTCHA on your website from a host. This will give more chances to the user to solve the equation.

This can be used in various pages like WordPress login page, password recovery page, comment, contact form, etc. Some CAPTCHA is very simple to solve but some are difficult.

These plugins give access to the users who are trying to solve CAPTCHA to change the question if they are not able to solve it.

Therefore the questions must not too hard which can be time-consuming and will drop the user experience. The simple version of CAPTCHAS is simply entering letters and numbers which are displayed in the images.

4. Email Verification

Another interesting way to avoid spam user registration in WordPress is by email verification. One can easily block spammers with the help of email verification and for this; you don’t require any kind of plugins.

All you require doing is to install the WPForm plugin and enable the user email activation option from the Add-ons tab. In any case, if different users try to create an account on your website, the WPForm plugin will directly send the verification link who sign up.

And in case, if the user is unable to open a verification link that user will be blocked and will be marked as a spammer automatically.

5. Block IP addresses of spammers

There is no denying in the fact that all computers on the internet have a unique IP address. And if by any case you have been facing lots of spam on your website all you require doing is:

• Head to the notifications panel from your WordPress settings menu
• Click on show smart tags under the message
• Click on ‘User IP Address’ and note down the IP addresses of all spammers

You can think of sending these IP addresses to the web hosting company to block them from accessing your website. In addition to this, you can also use plugins like ‘IP Ban’ that allows you to block IP addresses yourself from your WordPress settings.

That’s all folks!

Spamming is inevitable; it is something you are going to encounter in one form or the other. However, reducing it to the greatest possible extent is still a great way to go.

I sincerely hope that some of the aforementioned tips will help you to get rid of spam user registrations on your WordPress website or blog. Lastly, do keep this in mind that incorporating too many security measures in place might hinder upon your audience’s user experience. Never let that happen!