We've been receiving complaints over the last few months about the comment spam filtering service we've used over the last few years, Recaptcha. Spammers write software programs that troll the internet and post spam comments wherever they can. Some of these comments have been getting through the Recaptcha filter and into the sites of our farmers. These are not viruses; the goal is to create links to their preferred sites for search engine rankings or other goals.

In short, Recaptcha has not been getting the job done for our farmers, so we researched the latest in spam filtering technology and have installed a new filter called Mollom. This is just a part of our job to keep your site up-to-date and protected.

If you Small Farm Central site is having a problem with comment spam, please install the Mollom filter as below or ask for help.

Installing the Mollom spam filter

1. Create a 'free' account at mollom.com.
2. Once you have logged in to mollom, click on 'site manager' and then 'Add New site' and add your site.
3. Now click on 'view keys' next to your site
4. In a separate window, login to your control panel.
5. Navigate to: Administrate / comments / settings
6. Change the CAPTCHA method to 'Mollom' and add the Mollom API keys (from step #3) to the boxes provided.
7. Save your settings.
8. Now test your comments form on your public site to make sure everything is working.