May, 2025 : 9 ways to protect against spam posts in WordPress

📅 May 6, 2025 - Do you have a WordPress site and use registration, contact or comment forms in your articles? Then sooner or later you will face a problem with spam registrations from malicious users or bots that will flood your site and test your patience.

Due to the popularity of WordPress CMS, various hackers are constantly trying to gain access to your WordPress resources or spam your site visitors with irrelevant content. In today's article, you will learn how you can protect WordPress and your customers in 9 simple ways.

Keep your WordPress up to date
Updated WordPress means secure WordPress. We can’t stress enough how important it is to keep your WordPress CMS , theme , and plugins up to date . Ideally, check your site once a month or set a notification based on your available time so you don’t forget to check for new updates that have been released. Remember that even if one plugin isn’t updated, your entire site could be exposed to bots or malicious third parties.


Turn off recordings
If you simply display content on your WordPress site or don't need to have registered users, we recommend disabling public user registrations completely. To achieve this, follow these steps:



Connect to your WordPress site
Select Settings
Select General from drop down
In the Self-Registration field, deselect “Member self-registration is allowed”
Select Save changes.
Disable WordPress registrations

Now only users you invite by sending an email can sign up for your WordPress.

Enable recordings with Admin approval
If you need registration forms on your site, we recommend that you approve them manually through your WordPress administrator, so that you can avoid registrations from email addresses that seem suspicious to you (e.g. mark@hotladies.gr ).

Because WordPress does not have this feature by default, you will need to use a plugin such as User Registration , New User Approve , Registration Magic , etc. Whichever one you choose, you will be able to have your WordPress visitors register normally, but their registration will only be activated after review and approval by your site administrator.

Add Antispam Plugin
Add recognized and updated antispam plugins to your WordPress site that will protect comments, contact forms, and registration fields.

These plugins will filter the registrations and comments you receive and, based on your choices, will prevent spam users and content from registering or appearing on your site. We recommend that you try the Akismet and Antispam Bee plugins for free and test their effectiveness before purchasing another reliable plugin.

Define User Roles correctly for your users
WordPress site users have different permissions depending on their hierarchy from admin to regular users. Make sure to check regularly that site users have the correct permissions so that no one can exploit any security gaps that may exist.

To change user permissions:

Connect to your WordPress site
Select Users
Check that your users have been assigned the correct roles
Hover over the users you wish to change role and select Edit.
Select from the Role field the role you want to assign to your user.
User role security check in WordPress.

Add Security Plugin
Using a security plugin can cover many different security gaps on your WordPress site. We advise you to choose a plugin that has an effective firewall , blocks automated malicious bots , and has malware monitoring and isolation . These applications will protect your site’s registration forms from a number of specialized types of digital attacks. We initially recommend that you try the free version of Wordfence to see if it suits your WordPress security needs.


Add Captcha
Adding captcha to registration and contact forms is essential and checks in various ways whether the person filling out the fields is a regular user or a bot. In this way, it prevents various bots from making repeated registrations in the active fields of your site.

First, follow Google's instructions and create your own Captcha . Then you can choose to either add the Captcha you have created by sending it to your developer or by using the Wordfence plugin .

Blocking suspicious IPs and GeoBlocking
If your site developers or hosting company detect attacks from specific IPs to your WordPress, they should be blocked immediately . Also, if you detect frequent attacks from specific countries (e.g. Russia), which WordPress does not address in terms of its content, then you can implement GeoBlocking of IPs to prevent bots from specific countries from accessing your pages.

In any case, you can ask the company hosting your WordPress to block the list of IPs you want or add the premium version of Wordfence to your site & manage the list of unwanted IPs from there.

Enable Two-Factor Authentication
By enabling two-factor authentication in your WordPress, you add an extra layer of security to those who log in to your site. Whether you implement 2FA via Google Authenticator or via SMS, users who try to log in will need to confirm their details via their mobile phone. Since bots don’t have mobile phones, this particular way of shielding your WordPress is extremely effective. You can implement 2FA on your site with Wordfence by following the detailed instructions in the article.


Now you know how you can protect your WordPress from Spam registrations and you can choose which of the above protection methods are suitable for your own website.

Send us your own questions or concerns about securing your WordPress installation in the comments and share with us your own problems with bots or automated scripts so that we can come back with useful advice in our next article.