First of all, no matter how grave the situation, all you ever need is one or two profanity/anti-spam plugins to take your site back to its former glory. Just that, and you’re golden. That said, I would assume we all know a thing or two about spam.

Spam sucks the life out of everything. Spam is the murky marshland where fun gets stuck and dies. The clutter, the noise, the sacrilege, and oh – the horrendous links. But that’s just spam. Profanity, on the other hand, is a totally different animal. There are times when cursing like a sailor works in your favor, but for the vast majority of the human populace, profanity is a definite no-no.

This is especially true if your brand depends on a stellar reputation to survive. If you have a brand image to represent and protect, then profanity is by no means the way to go. Perhaps you run a community-based website; a social site -lets say- that attracts the good and the ills of the internet. Perhaps spam is just bombarding your personal blog and you’re sick of it. It really doesn’t matter the type of WordPress site you run, we all have a common enemy.

Which is why we – you and me – are taking decisive action against Mr. Spam Dior over there and his naughtier cousin, Jeanne de Profanity. It’s time we did away with these two culprits once and for all. We shall put a couple of profanity and anti-spam assassins on them both, and see how that goes.

Behold, ladies and gentlemen, top 10 profanity and anti-spam plugins for WordPress!

The Best 10 Profanity & Anti-Spam Plugins

WPBruiser

Formerly known as GoodBye Captcha, WPBruiser is a nightmare for spammers and their spam bots. I mean, WPBruiser sticks it to spam left, right, center, in the comment section, sign up forms, login forms – everywhere!

With a smashing rating of 4.9/5.0, WPBruiser by Mihai Chelaru (MihChe) is one of those anti-spam plugins that play the part really well. It’s in the league of the greatest of anti-spam plugins. But how does this plugin win where many other anti-spam plugins have failed? The plugin is engineered on smart spam sniffing tech.

WPBruiser nets spam bots long before they deposit endless strings of junk on your website. The bots won’t know what hit them. In other words, your readers don’t need to fill out hard-to-read captcha images, or contend with runaway spam that’s simply an eye sore.

I could go on and on but it all boils down to one thing. Download WPBruiser if you’d like knockout spam while giving your readers the show of their lifetime because, again, there’s no captcha. After all you have nothing to lose. It’s free from the WordPress repository. All you’ll lose is spam 🙂

Anti-Spam Pro

Hookay, so I somewhat didn’t explain exactly how Mihai Chelaru’s WPBruiser works. Well, here’s another plugin that uses the same tech to keep spam bots at bay. There’s one difference though; WebVitalli – the author behind Anti-Spam Pro – says that the plugin blocks 50% of manual spam as well. Mmmh…Sounds good.

If you’re eager to discover something new today, here’s how the tech behind these two plugins works. The plugin simply tricks spam bots to fill out hidden fields in the comment form. See how you’re supposed to fill out your name, email etc before posting a comment? Well, Anti-Spam Pro adds a couple of well-crafted hidden fields to the comment form.

Since bots are automated, they trigger the hidden fields all the time. Of course, they are then shown the door long before they deposit their payload on your site. It’s really that simple. Real commenters, on the other hand, don’t see these fields (or annoying captcha) meaning it’s smooth sailing for this group.

Anti-Spam Pro is easy to install, configure and use. It has a rating of 5.0/5.0 and retails at just $15 bucks.

Akismet

I know, I know…if we’ve already listed two plugins, each a certified spam killer, why in the name of Valhalla do we need a third one? Notwithstanding the fact that the first two plugins use futuristic tech that “tricks” spam bots, Akismet is still pushing on as the most popular of anti-spam plugins ever made.

Crafted at Automattic to maintain high standards, this bad boy is still the ultimate bug killer. Just install the plugin, enter an API key (you can get one for free at Akismet.com) and kill spam like they gave you the license. You know, like Pierce Brosnan. Or is it Sean Connery?

Akismet was fashioned to annihilate spam, which is probably why they have that “spam blocked” counter. By the way, that widget is essentially a well hidden back link, but who cares? All we care about is zero spam, and that’s what Akismet offers. Well…sort of. The staggering number of downloads at the WordPress plugin repository must mean something, right?

WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam

I really pity the bots, because they never see this shield coming until it’s too late. Captain WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam is no jokes. This gatekeeper lets no spam in be it registration spam, contact form spam, comment spam or trackback spam.

Yep, this anti-spam plugin is that multifaceted thanks to advanced blacklisting functionality, comment logging as well as a special shield for all masqueraders using proxy servers. That’s right, we have you in the crosshairs too, and the bullet shield is coming in hot. Again no captcha here, so yay!

Plugin compatibility is at level 9000 since this baby plays well with all major plugins – ecommerce, contact forms such as Ninja Kick, social plugins and so on and so forth.

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (G.A.S.P)

If bots had lungs, they would gasp for air every time one of their own mentioned this anti-spam plugin. See what I did there? Spam bots would be working your comment forms crazy like…

General Spam Bot: Who are we?!!!

Spam Bot Minions: Spam Bots!!!

General Spam Bot: What do we want?

Spam Bot Minions: To fill forms!!!

General Spam Bot: Wait…*gasps*…what…what’s that?

Spam Bot Minions: What? Where?

General Spam Bot: That there at the end of the form…it looks like a…damn…it’s a check box!

Spam Bot Minions: Oh nooo…we are doomed…it…it must be G.A.S.P again…

General Spam Bot: Shut up, save it…

By then it would be too late, the check box wins.

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin adds a clever check box to the comment box, and ask humans to confirm they are indeed human. Spam bots can’t decipher this, so they get squashed. Just. Like. That. At times, this plugin will dynamically generate named fields in the comment form just to confuse manual spammers who can’t get enough of your forms. Just set a limit to the maximum number of comments any given user can make and you have control of your comments again. Just. Like. That.

Top Profanity Plugins for WordPress

Wait, we are at number six already. That was fast; I hardly noticed. What I just noticed is we haven’t reviewed a single profanity plugin thus far. Not cool ninja, not cool. Here are a couple of WordPress profanity plugins worth checking out.

WebPurify Profanity Filter

“Yoo bro, why don’t we build a plugin that will rid the internet of profanity one asterisk at a time?”

“Surely why not? Sounds like a swell idea…but how in the h*ll are we going to do that?”

And WebPurify Profanity Filter was born. I might have exaggerated, or totally made up that entire conversation but what the h***. Wait WebPurify, that wasn’t even profane. Not cool.

Well, this anti-profanity plugin uses an ever-growing list of bad words to capture and asterisk-out profanity on your site. In other words, WebPurify Profanity Filter replaces profane words with asterisks. If you purchase a premium license key, you can moderate images and videos as well. Premium sounds good.

WP Content Filter

Freedom of expression isn’t posting abusive comments, swears and perversion of the highest order while hiding behind a computer screen. Verily I tell you, pseudonyms and avatars have made people faceless and ill-mannered.

But here’s a well deserved comeback. People whose lifestyle is to make other people miserable under the cloak of anonymity are just spineless mutts with the self esteem of a stone. D**n right! Now that’s freedom of expression. Feels good getting that off my back.

If you’re tired of visitors leaving vitriol and profanity on your site, take a breather as we have your back covered. Say hello to my little friend WP Content Filter, a profanity plugin that filters all abusive comments, and every keyword you specify on the plugin’s options page.

This plugin is smart to the core, as it will ignore the “pot” in “potent” even if you flag the keyword “pot”. In previous versions this wasn’t possible, meaning “potent” would have been filtered as “***ent”, which is simply sad. WP Content Filter has an impressive rating of 4.5/5.0.

ProfanityBlocker – Profanity Filter

Racial slurs, curse words, swearing words, and unneeded personal info are some of the faces of profanity you don’t need on your community-based website. One nasty word is all it takes to send social media into a frenzy and your brand image down the drain. Profanity will definitely blow up in your face.

Made with community-based websites in mind, ProfanityBlocker is uses heuristic logic to “…clean and remove profanity from user entered text.” Need I say more? Oh yeah, lest I forget, this plugin is incredibly easy to install and use. Say goodbye to profanity with a few clicks thanks to ProfanityBlocker – Profanity Filter.

Word Replacer

Kick profanity to the curb with Word Replacer, a plugin that lives to its title – replacing words with other words. In our case, replacing bad words with good say-no-to-swearing words.

Installing Word Replacer is super duper easy you should do it on your own without mum helping out. Move your finger an inch more, and you can specify areas that you want to the plugin to comb for bad words i.e. posts, comments, pages, tags etc. You can even have the plugin replace words in the comment section and ignore the same words within the post. How suave? That’s not the end of it, you can even use Word Replacer to insert HTML/JS code snippets into your site without WordPress screwing up the code with unwanted tags. Who would have guessed?

You can easily populate your list of bad words to capture profanity as soon as it rears its ugly head anywhere on your site. Other than that, you get a user-friendly admin page that is a pleasure to use. Word Replacer has over 7k downloads and a fair rating of 3.7/5.0.

Bleep Filter

It’s free. It’s open source. It’s quite the capable profanity plugin. It’s Bleep Filter baby. Hey guys, why the bliiip didn’t we start with this bad boy? Get it? You don’t have to give a hoot about spoilers and profanity anymore, thanks to the nifty technology that makes up this plugin’s underlying architecture.

Brought to us by Nathan Lampe and Jan Pingel, Bleep Filter offers a couple of content filtering applications that help you eliminate profanity once and for all. On top of filtering the bad words, Bleep Filter comes with highly advanced phonetic algorithm that detects not only the spelling, but also how the word sounds. This makes it virtually impossible for mischievous users to by-pass the filter intentionally. Just became a slippery road for spammers.

All you have to do is install the plugin, add the words you want to filter, and Bleep Filter will passively replace them in a variety of styles. The plugin digs deep, eliminating profanity from comments, posts and even RSS feeds. It has a great rating of 5.0/5.0, but some users have expressed concerns that the plugin doesn’t support custom fields. You can always work around this. Nonetheless, it is great a profanity plugin for WordPress.

At the end of the day…

Spam and profanity will drag your name through the mud, drive a hot iron rod through the heart of your SEO rankings, and expose your site to threats of all nature. It’s your responsibility to serve your visitors a clean and pleasurable experience on your WordPress site. Otherwise, you risk losing business and countless hours should spam and profanity choke the life out of your site. After all, with the myriad profanity and anti-spam plugins out there, you have no excuse at all.

We hope this post points you in the right direction as far as profanity and anti-spam plugins are concerned. At the same, we wouldn’t assume we covered all of your favorite anti-spam plugins. We apologize; it is never our intention since this post wouldn’t be complete without you.

To be even more awesome, please don’t hesitate sharing your favorite anti-spam plugins in the comments. Think of a colorful world without spam. What a relief that would be. Someone, anybody… give us more WordPress profanity and anti-spam plugins. That’s all that we ever needed 🙂

See you around.

#NP: All I Need is You – Lecrae