Image credit: Dok1’s “Spam”
After about 3 years with Akismet on UMW Blogs we switched over to TypePad Antispam so that UMW would no longer be breaking the new licensing for Akismet—under which we would be paying $750 a month for this spam filter on a multi-site installation with 5000+ blogs (actually that quote was for 4000+ blogs back in December 2010). We were more than willing to pay something for Akismet, but the $750 figure was too rich for our blood. I understand no free lunch and all—the liberterian mantra—but that quote seemed rather extreme. I know others have tried to work out something with Akismet, and I’m not sure where that went, but I can’t see how small public colleges like mine where the WordPress blogging platform is an experiment and an afterthought can come up with $10,000 a year for spam protection. We operate on a shoe-string budget and pay less than what Akismet wanted for spam filtering to host and backup all of UMW Blogs. The sad thing is that anyone who has run a large blogging system knows that without a good spam filter the system would be crippled to the point of uselessness. We ultimately stayed on Akismet for the Spring semester because we didn’t have an alternative lined-up and really couldn’t get off Akismet before the new semester started. Luckily no one at Akismet was interested in calling us out and making us pay—and Matt seemed rather cool about looking the other way, but all the same I felt like I was doing something wrong. It was uncomfortable and I wanted out of Akismet as soon as possible.
Midway through last semester I was turned on to TypePad’s AntiSpam option for WordPress, which like Akismet was also developed by Matt Mullenweg, in fact the two seem closely related—save that one is free and one isn’t 😉 We’ve now been on Typepad’s Antispam for 12 hours now, and all is good so far save one issue we are running into. Whenever anyone posts a comment on a blog the comment takes, but in the interim this error message shows up:
Warning: stripslashes() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php on line 226
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php:226) in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/subscribe-to-comments.php on line 817
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-content/mu-plugins/TypePadAntiSpam.php:226) in /home/umwblogs/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 934
I don’t think the Subscribe to Comments error is the cause because I deactivated that plugin and the other two errors still showed up—though I might be wrong. Anyone have any ideas how we might get around this? I also posted this same query in the WordPress MUltiSite forum to see what’s what. If get an answer there I will post it here and vice versa.
Either way, it is a huge relief to be done with Akismet, and I am more than confident we can get rid of this error and see how TypePad’s AntiSpam solution works for us. It may not be a silver bullet, but that’s allright because I am all about the pewter!
Also, my next post will be about how smoothly the upgrade went for UMW Blgos to WP 3.2.1—it was very, very nice.
Are you still using TypePad anti-spam? Are you finding it works about as well as akismet, in terms of spam prevention and general robustness? Thanks for any update!
Jonathan,
We are back on Akismet after trying our hand with TypePad’s Antispam solution for a NY minute. We survived most of the Fall 2011 semester with the Cookies for Comments spam solution, which worked surprisingly well, but we were starting to get spam complaints from faculty and students alike so we went back to Akismet. The reason we were resisting Akismet to begin with was because the quote they gave us was a ridiculous $900 a month for the service, but that has since come down to about $45 a month for the service ($550 a year) which is both afforable for us and well worth the peace of mind.