Wordpress comment spam control tips

[Whitey]

Can anyone lend some practical tips based on experience with putting effective spam controls and management in place.

I'm new to this - been hit with 12,000+ spam comments that will need to be ditched - just to indicate the scale of the spamming on a new blog.

It's not just the control, it's the time management and the ability to build a community around genuine comments.

So I guess things like "captcha" ; discus ; possible WP plugins all play a part. Thoughts?

[travelin cat]

Get Akismet. It'll take care of most of those comment spams.

[lorax]

At a bare minimum use Akismet - it's worth the money. Another is to block IPs from countries you don't do business with - this will reduce the number of spam bots looking for a comment form to fill.