Back in the good old days all links were followed. Thanks to Google and spammers the nofollow link was born. Fact are that spammers need to be stopped. Facts are that bloggers need your link juice. The problems here are that leaving comments is no longer a profitable source of backlinks. The facts are that the nofollow link is destroying communities.

WordPress Anti-spam plugins

The tools however are available to help your community grow. The tools are available to kill spam. Used judiciously your community can grow. I have a few rules for my site. I moderate every single first post. A combination of Aksimet and my moderation should weed out most spammers. Some are brighter and will get past Aksimet, Some may even get past my first post rule. But Aksimet remains as a tool to blacklist the spammers if they abuse my hospitality. Aksimet is a standard plugin on WordPress, Just activate it and add the key and you have an anti spam tool that solves most of the issues.

Another tool in my arsenal against spammers is Bad Behaviour. Bad behaviour is a plugin that weeds out Spammers based on their known sources. This tool has removed a pile of that annoying bot spam. Bad Behaviour records the bots, their locations and ips and just disallows them from commenting.

A few other anti spam tools I have found but have not tested are

Spam Karma looks impressive

Defensio and Peters Anti spam plugin are more anti spam plugins

NoFollow to DoFollow

I start by installing Lucias Link Love, Lucias Link Love allows me to decide how soon I follow links, As spam is a problem, I use lucias link love as a method of excluding casual visitors from gaining link juice. Spammers are far more likely to be casual visitors than regular posters. I set the plugin to give all regular posters link love. I consider anyone to have posted 5 comments or more that I havent banned for spamming a regular poster. Get involved in the conversation and you get Link Juice.

Alternatives to Lucias link love which I have not tested are

Do Follow from semiologic.com

DoFollow(WPress) fom Kimmo

Remove NoFollow from seopedia.org

Another Tool which interests me is SezWho, This tool takes it one step further and allows bloggers to create a profile which is linked to from their comments. So not only are you allowing your community to add to the conversation on your blog, you can track their conversations through other blogs.

Adding CommentLuv gets your commentors last post found and published on your site. What a great way to reward your visitors when they leave comments.