• Startup & Investor Resources
  • Recent Posts
  • Search
  • Contact Me

Instigator Blog

Lean Analytics, startups, angel investing, product management and more!

New WordPress Plugin for Spam: Defensio

July 9, 2007 by Ben Yoskovitz

It’s been just about a month or so since I switched from Akismet to Defensio.

The Defensio team are good friends of mine – Carl Mercier (uber-developer in charge of things over there) and Mat Balez (as good an instigator as any). They asked me to alpha test their WordPress plugin and I was happy to oblige.

Defensio is now in closed-beta. You can contact them for an invite by visiting the Defensio website.

In January, I wrote a blog post about ways Akismet could be improved. I know Carl and Mat didn’t read that post and decide to build a better spam plugin, but they’ve started to implement some of those ideas in a worthwhile way. They’ve sworn me to some amount of secrecy, so you’ll just have to sign-up for the beta yourself.

In the meantime, the results have been good. It’s not that Akismet does a terrible job, but there doesn’t seem to be much new work being done on it. The Defensio team are committed to making improvements to their existing WordPress plugin, and seeing if they can do a better job of beating spam. Even some of the Administrative interface changes alone make Defensio worthwhile.

Blog spam is a tough nut to crack. Spammers seem intent on making our lives miserable; and it’s frustrating when spam sneaks through, or worse, we find false positives caught in our spam filters. It’s a cat and mouse game that we’ll be playing with spammers for many, many years to come. Defensio may be able to help.

Filed Under: Blogging

Want more content like this?

Signup for free and you'll get new content as soon as it's available. Thanks!

Ben Yoskovitz

Founding Partner at Highline Beta, a hybrid venture studio and VC firm that works with large, ambitious companies to identify new areas of opportunity through internal and external innovation.

Previously I was VP Product at VarageSale and GoInstant (acq. $CRM), and Founding Partner at Year One Labs.

Angel investments include: Breather, Spoiler Alert, SendWithUs and others.

My bio »

Buy Lean Analytics

Lean Analytics

"Lean Analytics is the missing piece of Lean Startup!" - Dan Martell, founder Clarity

Get the book at leananalyticsbook.com

Get updates

I've moved to Focused Chaos a newsletter focused on startups, investing and more. Please visit there to subscribe and get weekly content.

  • Startup & Investor Resources
  • Recent Posts
  • Search
  • Contact Me
Views expressed here are mine and mine alone.

Copyright © 2023 · Built on the Genesis Framework