The guys behind WordPress had the foresight and energy to create Akismet to help control blog spam, and the blogging world wouldn’t be the same without it. A popular web application like WordPress is a big target for spammers, since they can write bots to pump their spew into it. Akismet helps cut that problem down to size.

I was really pleased to see a cool site called StopForumSpam.com, created by a couple of developers who believed they could help solve the problem. The idea of StopForumSpam.com is simple – make it easy for people to report spammers on their sites, so others can block them. It’s fast, free, easy to use, and I feel it can help control the damage caused by some of the worst offenders.

Over a half-million known spammers are already listed at StopForumSpam.com, and more are added every day. If you run a forum site you might want to take a look at the mods that are available for phpBB, vBulletin and simpleMachinesForum. There’s also an API available that is very easy to incorporate into your own application.

We liked StopForumSpam.com so much at DZone that we decided to adopt the site and provide hosting and support for it in our data center. The founders have been carrying the load all by themselves, and it’s a pleasure to be able to help them out in their worthy mission. StopForumSpam.com can’t solve the whole problem, but it can certainly be a piece of the solution. I hope it will be helpful to you!