Browsing Reddit a couple of days ago I came across an interesting comment in r/Wordpress, where I knew about the Comment Blocklist for WordPress, a resource comprised by phrases, patterns and keywords commonly used by comment bots and spammers in their comments, which can arguably replace plugins like Akismet by Automattic.

Created in 2011 by Grant Hutchinson and maintained since then, the list currently has 53,000+ entries, and it’s constantly updated. Grant subjectively includes keywords based on comment spam submitted to his own sites, and it seems to be pretty effective.

Now, the reason this called my attention is that, because I’m now hosting this site with Pikapods, keeping CPU and memory usage to low levels is interesting, as it does keep monthly costs low. Thus, replacing Akismet with such solution seems appealing — and thus, I’ve replaced one with the other for experimenting. Let’s see how it goes… so far, so good.