We all get fed up with those unwanted comments trying to sell us something or telling us a story that if we don't pass on something bad will happen. How can we avoid getting these types of comments in order to concentrate on the genuine, real comments?

There are many tools and programmes you can use on your blog to help prevent spamming, such as Akismet, but sometimes spammers still make it through. The first thing to do is have your blog settings set so you have to approve comments before they appear open to the public. This will indeed mean more time and effort on your part, but it also means that you get the chance to stop the spammers before your blog comments are overrun by them.

The next three steps are pretty straight forward but it means having all 3 plug ins switched on.

Akismet is a standard WordPress plug in that helps stop spammers commenting, it is built into the WordPress installation. All you need is an API key to activate Akismet from your WordPress plugins folder. Once you have inserted the API key you are all done. This is only an identifier, it will look for comments that match the common criteria of a spam comment.

Growmap is made by the same people that make commentluv. It put a 'confirm you're not a spammer' box that you may see on the majority of other people's blogs. This is supposed to stop software that produces spam comments from having the ability to post comments on your post and 9 out of 10 times works effectively.

Growmap offers loads of options to protect your blog.

Here are a few quick tips to help you use Growmap effectively:

Change the checkbox name regularly to help stop any bots that have picked up on it from being able to gain access again. Disallow all trackbacks, Change the checkbox label; this means bots that are clever will not pick up on the plugin's nature that spammers target. AVH First defence against spam plugin is another plugin that not many people know about and hardly anyone uses. It is created by the same people who created the Stop forum spam plugin so it is mainly used for forums. This pulls data in from all over the internet so people who spam regularly won't be able access the comments of your blog, and in the case they do manage to access it and comment, they will be blocked right away.

Whenever there is a chance for the public to comment on a post, it is common knowledge that there will be spammers. Overall, the best way to stop spammers is to install the plug ins on the programmes that you use. This is a lot quicker, easier and less effort than going through comments individually and deleting the spammer's comments.