Guestbook Spam is Fun

28 Feb 2024 | ~2 minute read

Since launching my guestbook yesterday, I've been hit with a bunch of spam entries. I forgot how much "fun" it is dealing with this shit.

My guestbook seems to have gone down a treat - since launching it, a lot of people have signed it (psst, go sign it yourself). This is great, but last night I noticed some spam start to filter in too. It was only a couple though, so no biggy. I deleted them, went about my business and went to bed.

This morning I checked and oh-my-fucking-god there was so much spam waiting for me. I'd delete them all, go away for 20 minutes, come back and a handful more would be there waiting for me. 🤦‍♂️

Dealing with the spam

I had already implemented a basic honeypot on the guestbook, but it seems that wasn't enough to deal with all these bloody bots. I noticed that Manu had done things a little differently on his guestbook, and since he also uses Kirby, I thought I'd reach out to him for advice.

Turns out, he hasn't had any spam yet, and he was nice enough to share the code for his solution with me. Like most things that Manu does, the code was simple and elegant.

So I took his code and implemented my own twist on it. That was a couple hours ago now, and so far...no spam! I decided to keep the honeypot in place too, as I imagine it will trip up some of the more basic bots.

While I was there, I added the option to choose the card colour when you post. Originally I was going to randomise the colour, but thought it would be more fun to give you fine people the choice instead.

Final thoughts

Hopefully this will be the end of the spam problem. I'm sure some will get through, that's just the nature of the internet these days. But as long as it's not tonnes, like it was overnight, it's all good.

If spam does become a problem again, I'll have to re-think my solution. I've battled with comment spam in the past, and have no desire to do it again. If it gets really bad, I may have to remove the guestbook altogether, but let's hope it doesn't come to that as I'm really enjoying it.

Anyway, if you're using Kirby and want to implement a guestbook on your site, drop me an email using the button below - I'll be happy to help.

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