Block Top Spammers
Block Top Spammers displays a list of your top spammers’ IP addresses, based on all comments in your database that are marked as spam. It also generates a blacklist for your .htaccess file to block those spammers from…
Consider an alternative
Block Top Spammers shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 20+ sites and was last updated 17 years ago, and scores 24/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (20+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 16 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 2.9 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Block Top Spammers stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| akismet | >100 |
| comments | >100 |
| htaccess | >100 |
| spam | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Block Top Spammers
From the official readme · v0.5Description
Block Top Spammers displays a list of your top spammers’ IP addresses, based on all comments in your database that are marked as spam. It also generates a blacklist for your .htaccess file to block those spammers from your website entirely, thus taking load off the server. – You will need another plugin (like Akismet) to identify the spam.
PHP 5 and Apache required.
Roadmap
0.6 (April 2010)
- edit blacklist (i.e. remove individual addresses, manually add addresses and/or subnets)
- manually override .htaccess location
- customize 403 error shown to blocked spammers
1.0 (May 2010)
- Multi-Site support (WordPress 3.0, maybe WPMU 2.8/2.9)
Installation
- Upload the entire
top-spammersdirectory to the/wp-content/pluginsdirectory - Activate Block Top Spammers through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Make sure you have another plugin installed and activated to identify the spam (if you don’t, take a look at Akismet)
Changelog
Blocking access to wp-comments-post.php only, and automatic updates of .htaccess
0.5
- blocking access to
wp-comments-post.phponly - error document gives a short explanation why access was denied, links to http://ten-fingers-and-a-brain.com/top-spammers.html
- admin page moved to the Comments section of the admin menu
- IPv6 compatibility
- Notice errors fixed
- automatic updates of .htaccess (when writable)
0.4.3
- links to whois (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC, AfriNIC)
- can’t blacklist an IP that has comments pending moderation (likely ham because Akismet hasn’t caught them)
- links to ham or moderation queue for IP addresses with ham or comments pending moderation
- layout improvements
0.4.2
- link from Block Top Spammers page to edit-comments.php to display the spam comments from a certain IP
- better support for WP 2.9 and newer: when deleting comments the commentmeta table gets purged, too
0.4.1
- plugin now officially licensed under GPLv3
- list of top spammers can be ordered by IP address
- show no. of different (unique) spammers’ IP addresses
- admins can’t lock themselves out, i.e. their own client IP can’t be blacklisted
- can’t blacklist an IP that also has approved comments (ham)
0.4
- separated the code into three .php files
- top-spammers.php the main plugin file, always loaded, contains minimal code to reduce loading time
- top-spammers-wp.php the plugin class file, contains all the original plugin code, only loaded in backend
- top-spammers-template.php the admin-page template file, contains just the admin-page html code, only loaded when admin-page is displayed
- blacklist not autoloaded to reduce loading time
- i18n
- l10n for: de_DE (language file by Martin Lormes)
0.3
- initial public release
Screenshots
For developers
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Best Block Top Spammers alternatives
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FAQ
Block Top Spammers: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Oct 10, 2026
Is Block Top Spammers free?
Yes. Block Top Spammers is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Block Top Spammers safe to use in 2026?
Block Top Spammers shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 20+ sites and was last updated 17 years ago, and scores 24/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Block Top Spammers?
Block Top Spammers is active on 20+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 6,085 times since it launched in September 2009. It was downloaded 65 times in the last 30 days.
Does Block Top Spammers work with WordPress 7.1?
Block Top Spammers is officially tested up to WordPress 2.9.2, while the latest release is 7.1.3. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Block Top Spammers last updated?
The latest version, 0.5, was released on March 23, 2010 (17 years ago).
Who makes Block Top Spammers?
Block Top Spammers is developed and maintained by Martin Lormes.
What are the best alternatives to Block Top Spammers?
The most popular alternatives to Block Top Spammers are WP Armour (400K+ installs), Honeypot Anti-Spam (10K+ installs) and FV Antispam (900+ installs).
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