Cold numb fingers and brain dead posts be damned. This is far more important. If you happened to be one of those unlucky ones running WordPress troubled by the sudden onslaught of comment spam recently, look no further. For a while now I have successfully relied on the Bad Behavior spam filter to block all incoming spam attempts. However, due to certain…complications, it's been a while since it operated as successfully as it did a few months before. Now that has all changed.

Even though it's the first of the beta versions, Michael has been working hard behind the scenes with a little nudge from the WordPress community to get Bad Behavior updated and smart enough to combat comment spam. After testing out what it could do with the alpha version, I have no doubt that it does what it says…which is that it blocks out 99% of all incoming spam. That gives me plenty of room not to bother manually deleting those that come through if ever they do.

Incidentally the alpha version also blocked out the entire country of Singapore. I don't know what that says about them and spam, but I'll take the word for it that it's just a Microsoft glitch.

That aside, if you'd like to see spam gone from your blog, head over to the Bad Behavior development page and download your copy of the plugin. If you can't use it, well then why don't you try using WordPress first or even sign up with WordPress.com instead so you don't have to bother with spam in the first place?

Given that you are already a Bad Behavior user and if you have prior versions of the Bad Behavior already running, you got to read the instructions carefully before you upload and activate it, otherwise you'd be in for a screwup. I know it might be a little daunting for some, but come on…it's either you learn or you get bombarded with spam.

I don't think it's too hard a choice to make now is it?