Thank you for this. I didn’t know I could block by IP at all, any way at all, without a plugin.
Testing “Spam Free WordPress” now. At first glance it is effortless, automatic and accurate. I may soon test it on bbPress. 
OK. For the time being Akismet is out and Spam Free WordPress is in. Spammer Blocker is sidelined.
– It offers unattended removal of machine-generated spam
– It offers an IP blacklist
If It works for Comments I’ll turn bbPress back on.
I’ll let you know what happens.
Three weeks ago I set out to test bbPress with Akismet. Here is what I found.
– Akismet requires manual spam deletion under all circumstances
– Akismet cannot block by IP
– Akismet cannot prevent users from creating tags in bbPress. All bogus tags must be removed manually. It is not clear to me why users are allowed to create tags to begin with.
I took a fit this AM and turned off both WP Comments and bbPress. All I really want to do is create content. However, there is another part of me that is not ready to be directed by cockroaches.
I am wondering if Spammer Blocker will play well with Akismet. I am also wondering if there are other worthwhile strategies I have not yet found.
Comments?
Thanks. That brought my posts back.
Once these buggers found out they could create tags, their numbers increased. Since deleting the bogus tags is a manual operation, and since nobody used the forum anyway, I had to shut it down.
Suddenly my site is malfunctioning in strange ways. My posts are all disconnected from the style sheet, although the home page looks fine. I’m off to find out what’s wrong now.
I found an unusual spam in the forum today. It surprised me that Akismet missed it. It was also the first time I noticed the user could create his own topic tag. It might be nice to disable that feature. How?
Yup! Fooling with the slug names in SETTINGS | FORUMS made my workaround workaround again.
Tanks people.
Mine disappeared too, sort of.
Remember that FORUM/FORUMS name issue? I worked around it by creating a menu button that went straight to FORUMS. Well, my workaround doesn’t workaround anymore (2.0-rc-3). I can get there now by pathing to FORUM. Sadly I still end up with FORUMS > FORUM in the forum breadcrumbs.
I’m no PHP developer but I can edit ASCII text. If you tell me how I’ll just disappear that whole breadcrumb display and this will become a non-issue. The rest of the site doesn’t have breadcrumbs, the forum doesn’t need them either. Give me a file name and a line to comment out.
Of course, any other expedient solution you recommend would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ed
…..
It’s hard to know for sure how a service like Akismet is working. I can look at stats, but I can’t examine the rejected posts. All I can say is, there is no spam.
Anyone here is welcome to test the (v2.0-beta-3b) forum using Akismet. Try to spam it.
http://www.amancooks.com/wp/forum/
John, every time I look for help here, I find out you’re on top of it. Baked in indeed! That’s just what I hoped to hear. My forum has a high bounce rate because nobody wants to register. After reading this I switched the mandatory registration off. Thanks again!
I used bbp-twentyten, no child theme, and a modified twentyten css. I have no theme-related issues.
Consider. You have a platform, a theme, and a plugin. The three have to work together. The three developers have never met, have widely disparate skill levels, and the users are the QA (egad).
It’s a miracle anything works in these systems. My hat is off to John and his bros.
This seems to be resolving well.
