Coming up with Blog posts and knowing how your traffic behaves is only a few parts of a much larger picture when it comes to managing a Blog properly. When you add on moderating comments and filtering out spam, it can easily become a two-person job once your traffic gets to a certain level. So in order to help mitigate that you should look at some tools and services that will help reduce the noise you see in the comment section. My
Spam Filters
There are two basic types of filters I will talk about in this post, but there are quite a few more that you can use and I may explore in later posts. The first is spam filters. Spam filters are automated tools that will flag comments for possible spam so that you can review it and take action. My personal favorite for this task is a service called Mollom it will scan incoming input from your comments and flag things that look suspicious. It also has a Wordpress and Drupal plugin and has been getting better as time has gone on because of the work they have done to make the filter smarter. They have several plans that will let you get started and once you get a lot of traffic you can upgrade.
Bot Filters
So there are a lot of different types of bot filters, many of these in the past have required the real user to input a code, this was known as captcha fields. They are annoying and for some users with hearing or visual imparities impossible to use. Instead of these I typically recommend my users use a tool called honeypot there is a Wordpress plugin and Drupal module. They both require some setup but are much better from the user interaction perspective. Instead of requiring a user to enter a code, honeypots work by including a hidden field. Bots don't know it is hidden and so when they fill it out they are prevented from posting or registering with the site.
Language Filters
Sometimes it is not advertisements or bots you're looking to prevent, but bad or insulting language. There are tools for this as well, Drupal has the Phonetic Word Filter that will let you set this up, Wordpress has many plugins to do this. This is useful for situations where you are trying to maintain a PG-13 or family-friendly environment.
There are other things you can also employ to help manage your comment section, including modules and plugins that will let you punish or temporarily ban users from posting. These can all be used to reduce the workload you have when it comes to managing and supervising your comment section. Otherwise, with a moderated only comment section, you are essentially killing conversations before they have a chance to start, and killing the chance for users to build a community around your blog.