Rating: 5 stars
I’ve used this for many years, and it does a great job. Thank you!
These one-star reviewers should be posting questions to help/support, yeesh.
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I’ve been using this plugin for years in all my worpdress installs and it still do a great job.
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Current update broke our sites and had to remove the plugin
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DEVELOPER: Take this plugin down! You see all the complaints and errors that it’s causing
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Appears that has been NO support for a year now from the looks of the support threads. It has been blowing .php errors since the release of 4.2. I used to really love this but down to one star for lack of keeping this product updated as well as followed up and resolved in support forums.
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Blocks legit content, messed up https, prevents people from commenting even if whitelisted… this causes more problems than it solves.
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I’ve used this plugin on several sites and use all 3 of the 3rd parties with it. It’s been very solid for me and very reliable (I get results just as good as Akismet). However, the settings may be a bit confusing for beginners or those not familiar with WP and how spam setups work.
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Works very well with only default options. I hope it will not block trusted visitors – the limit of this kind of plugins.
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avh-first-defense-against-spam repeatedly added my IP as SPAM to its IP cache. I deleted the IP from the cache and tried again. First time it shows the page, second time I am blocked. It blocked me even though I was no even trying to add a comment. This is not acceptable.
Additionally it does not tell me why it blocked my IP. It does not even tell me when I’m logged in as admin. In the IP cache it should show the reason why it added an IP as SPAM. Also missing is a reverse lookup of the IP. I’m tired of doing the reverse lookup by hand.
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Blocked the whole university! LOL
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2 days ago I received a “Access has been blocked” message when I tried to assess my favorite blog at home.
today I got the same message when I tried to assess the blog at my office.
I think the damned plugin blocks all IP of the single biggest ISP of Taiwan.
or even worse, it blocks the whole country.
great job!
Rating: 5 stars
I want to break down the 6 reasons why I love this plugin:
1) This plugin brings together the power of numerous blacklisting networks into a single tool. Now I have the power to easily fight back against the spam.
2) It’s not a single click install but it’s close. Some minor configuration is required getting API keys, etc but I believe it’s worth it.
Why is this a selling point? To me it highlights that it isn’t a “black box of voodoo magic” and suggests it is legitimately protecting my blog. I am highly suspicious of dodgy plugins that pull you in with “magic” and try and make you pay.
3) Speaking of which it is completely free and makes use of free blacklisting networks such as StopForumSpam, Spamhaus and ProjectHoneyPot. I have my fingers crossed they’ll add support for OpenBL.org in the future (hint hint).
4) It doesn’t try and pretend it stops every and all spam or malicious attack – however I’m yet to see a solution that does without a high level of false positives. Beware of anyone promising everything. However that said my spam comments have dropped by 95% after installing AVH First Defense Against Spam.
5) With the bad traffic stopped, I can more clearly distinguish legitimate traffic in my webstats and analytics from all that noise.
6) There is next to no performance hit against my blog loading especially with the built-in caching layer. There can be a very slight delay if the third-party network is slow but this is a) rare and b) worth the half a second wait.
Fantastic plugin, excellent work and great quality. I look forward to seeing it expand into other networks into the future. ??
]]>Rating: 1 star
If you’re using this plugin and have the “block before serving content” on (if that’s a separate setting, that is), then you’re effectively blocking broadband users from accessing your website at all (thanks to the plugin using Spamhaus lists in the wrong way). Screenshot to prove that: https://i49.tinypic.com/357psib.jpg
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WordPress 4.7.3 review:
Too many errors–I get at top of dashboard pages: “Notice: Use of undefined constant WP_LOCAL_DEV WP_LOCAL_DEV – assumed ‘WP_LOCAL_DEV’ in …/wp-content/plugins/avh-first-defense-against-spam/class/avh-fdas.admin.php on line 109”, automated updates fail, not tested with current WordPress version, hasn’t been updated for 8 months as of 5 April 2017, last WP version it was tested with was 4.5.7, etc. It seems to have been abandoned by the developer. A shame because it used to work great.
WordPress V. 3.5 review:
It reports IPs that try to comment on your blog. You can then add the bad IP address to the Blacklist. You can also Whitelist you IP address and others you don’t want blocked. Connects to Spamhaus, Honey Pot, and Stop Forum Spam to check IPs against their lists. You can add your HoneyPot catcher link in the settings.
Rating: 1 star
The plugin blocked the Google Bot from indexing my website. I recognized that only as I looked in my Webmastertools and I got a bunch of 404’s. Allthough all sites were accessable for me, the Google Bot was blocked. I am not sure what settings were responsible for that as I directly deleted the plugin to prevent further damage to the website and it’s rankings.
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