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review · 1 starsWe looked to this solution because Akismet was marking too many false positives. This plugin performed miserably when we first tried it several months ago. Legit messages marked as spam, easily ID’d spam marked as legit. After being told recent versions were better we deployed it on 5 sites with relatively few incoming messages, and it it got it 99% right on 4 of the sites but flagged a significant amount of legit messages (20%) as spam on the other. All are running the same version (1.07 I believe). UPDATE: This past week we conducted an experiment by running it on a heavily messaged website – but one that uses the same platform and theme as the others. It performed miserably, flagging 50% of all legit messages as spam, especially those with a file attachment. Unfortunately, whatever mechanisms this plugin uses are not reliable for form spam detection. Back to the drawing board. This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Company 50 . Reason: Newer versions not as bad This topic was modified 5 years ago by Company 50 .
Hey @co50 ! I’m sorry to hear your experience with this plugin has not been as positive as our other reviewers have noted. This plugin is an implementation of a somewhat simple anti-spam measure first detailed by David Walsh (here: https://davidwalsh.name/wordpress-comment-spam ). While it certainly isn’t perfect we have found that it does block quite a large percentage of automated spam in most uses. The method is heavily dependent on JS so there are certainly cases where this can lead to false positives (if the user has JS disabled or there is a conflict on page preventing the JS from triggering) or false negatives (if the bot is using a method where JS is executed). In any case, I want to thank you for taking the time to write this review. I realize that when a plugin does not work as expected it is often simpler to just move on to another, but detailed feedback is important for a plugin developer so I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to do so. Thanks!
Hi @co50 — have you had a chance to use the plugin for more time? We’d love for you to give it another shot and if it still doesn’t work for you, we’d like to fix it! There’s a potential reason the plugin doesn’t work for you, and it’s related to your theme. If you’re willing to email support@gravityview.co a copy of your theme files, we should be able to confirm this suspicion. Thanks again!
We have not tried it again. We’ve since settled on a simple question at the end of the forms “What letter does the last day of the week begin with?” which has had a 100% spam elimination rate and a 100% no-false-positives rate. We use the Pro theme if it helps you figure it out.
Thanks for the info! Do you mean this theme? https://theme.co/pro
YUP.
@co50 Are you willing to give the plugin another try? It’ll help your users not have to answer math questions! Here’s a new version that I believe will fix the issue: https://github.com/gravityview/gravity-forms-zero-spam/archive/develop.zip
Hi – we do have two sites that we kept your plugin on that don’t get a ton of form submissions. We are evaluating those sites and if it looks good, we’ll expand it to a higher volume site. If that works out I will certainly update my review to reflect the latest version.
Excellent! Please make sure you’re running this development version that should work better for you.
This isn’t a production release yet with the fix?
Nope, I’m waiting for someone to confirm that it helps with the issue of entries being marked as spam. The code’s ready to release, but I wanted feedback first. – Zack
@co50 – I run a number of sites on X and Pro, and I’d love to hear if the dev version of this plugin is working well you. Thanks!
I wanted to chime in quick to let y’all know we will not be deploying a dev version of this. After the first trial of using this plugin nearly cost us our best client, we aren’t willing to take the risk deploying any test versions, especially as Akismet has gotten back to a familiar accuracy rate. We do currently have the existing version (1.0.7) of your plugin installed on 3 client sites with very low email volume and the accuracy rate is about 92% over the past month out of 26 messages, which is below the threshold we’d accept.
@co50 Thank you for the update.
@co50 Are you willing to reconsider your star rating? If not, that’s fine, but if your thoughts have changed at all, I’d appreciate you taking the time to update your review. Thank you 🙏
I’ve revised my review. I hadn’t revised it yet because I was waiting for the plugin to totally get it right. It’s still not good on one of our sites, which is strange as they all use the same theme, same forms style, and same version of this plugin.
Thank you @co50 ! The newest version (1.1.1) uses a different method that should be even better. It loads the script inline where Gravity Forms loads their scripts and uses the same hooks. Thanks again for revisiting the review.
Hey. I have this on a few sites. But 1.1.1 is doing the same thing on one of my sites that co50 mentioned above. I’m not sure what’s going on, but everything is going into SPAM.
Hey @co50 ! I’m sorry to hear your experience with this plugin has not been as positive as our other reviewers have noted. This plugin is an implementation of a somewhat simple anti-spam measure first detailed by David Walsh (here: https://davidwalsh.name/wordpress-comment-spam ). While it certainly isn’t perfect we have found that it does block quite a large percentage of automated spam in most uses. The method is heavily dependent on JS so there are certainly cases where this can lead to false positives (if the user has JS disabled or there is a conflict on page preventing the JS from triggering) or false negatives (if the bot is using a method where JS is executed). In any case, I want to thank you for taking the time to write this review. I realize that when a plugin does not work as expected it is often simpler to just move on to another, but detailed feedback is important for a plugin developer so I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to do so. Thanks!
Hi @co50 — have you had a chance to use the plugin for more time? We’d love for you to give it another shot and if it still doesn’t work for you, we’d like to fix it! There’s a potential reason the plugin doesn’t work for you, and it’s related to your theme. If you’re willing to email support@gravityview.co a copy of your theme files, we should be able to confirm this suspicion. Thanks again!
We have not tried it again. We’ve since settled on a simple question at the end of the forms “What letter does the last day of the week begin with?” which has had a 100% spam elimination rate and a 100% no-false-positives rate. We use the Pro theme if it helps you figure it out.
Thanks for the info! Do you mean this theme? https://theme.co/pro
YUP.
@co50 Are you willing to give the plugin another try? It’ll help your users not have to answer math questions! Here’s a new version that I believe will fix the issue: https://github.com/gravityview/gravity-forms-zero-spam/archive/develop.zip
Hi – we do have two sites that we kept your plugin on that don’t get a ton of form submissions. We are evaluating those sites and if it looks good, we’ll expand it to a higher volume site. If that works out I will certainly update my review to reflect the latest version.
Excellent! Please make sure you’re running this development version that should work better for you.
This isn’t a production release yet with the fix?
Nope, I’m waiting for someone to confirm that it helps with the issue of entries being marked as spam. The code’s ready to release, but I wanted feedback first. – Zack
@co50 – I run a number of sites on X and Pro, and I’d love to hear if the dev version of this plugin is working well you. Thanks!
I wanted to chime in quick to let y’all know we will not be deploying a dev version of this. After the first trial of using this plugin nearly cost us our best client, we aren’t willing to take the risk deploying any test versions, especially as Akismet has gotten back to a familiar accuracy rate. We do currently have the existing version (1.0.7) of your plugin installed on 3 client sites with very low email volume and the accuracy rate is about 92% over the past month out of 26 messages, which is below the threshold we’d accept.
@co50 Thank you for the update.
@co50 Are you willing to reconsider your star rating? If not, that’s fine, but if your thoughts have changed at all, I’d appreciate you taking the time to update your review. Thank you 🙏
I’ve revised my review. I hadn’t revised it yet because I was waiting for the plugin to totally get it right. It’s still not good on one of our sites, which is strange as they all use the same theme, same forms style, and same version of this plugin.
Thank you @co50 ! The newest version (1.1.1) uses a different method that should be even better. It loads the script inline where Gravity Forms loads their scripts and uses the same hooks. Thanks again for revisiting the review.
Hey. I have this on a few sites. But 1.1.1 is doing the same thing on one of my sites that co50 mentioned above. I’m not sure what’s going on, but everything is going into SPAM.