General

When I have problem with Mollom, what information should I provide in my service ticket?

By using the contact form on Mollom.com, you can submit a trouble ticket for our support team. Please try to provide as much information as you think may be relevant to your particular situation. Note that you can also use this form for information about pricing/sales information, or if you have trouble logging into the Mollom.com website.

For technical support requests, it is very important that you provide us with with:

  • the name and version of the CMS platform hosting your Mollom plugin
  • the version of your Mollom plugin
  • the name of your website, or in some cases, your Mollom public key
  • and any debug information that may have appeared in the logs of your CMS about the issue. In particular, in some of the very latest Drupal plugins on the Drupal CMS, there is a "Mollom session ID" that is very helpful to us as we investigate service related issues. (If the Mollom session ID is not shown on your Drupal logs, upgrade to the latest module. In this module, the session ID is printed at the bottom of the watchdog entry starting with "Ham:", "Spam:" or "Unsure:".

Depending on your particular issue, our support technicians may ask additional questions (such as your version of PHP on your server, whether you can make outbound HTTP requests using PHP, etc).

How does Mollom compare with other services like Akismet or Defensio?

Due to its convenience, accuracy, performance, accessibility, and openness, we think Mollom is the best solution available for preventing comment spam on your site.

To help compare and contrast Mollom with other similar services, we've developed a table that focuses on a few key areas.

  Mollom Akismet Defensio
Company Mollom Automattic Websense Inc.
When in doubt, use CAPTCHA? Yes No No
Protect user registrations Yes, on some platforms No No
Supported platforms Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and others WordPress and others WordPress and others
Multiple language support Yes Yes Yes
Commercial partners Yes No Yes
Developer API Yes Yes Yes
CAPTCHA support Yes No No
Reputation tracking Yes Unknown Yes
Highly-available back-end network Yes Unknown Yes
Ability to retain spam for manual moderation Yes2 Yes Unknown
Protection for new user registrations, lost password requests, etc. Yes2 Unknown Unknown
Protection for custom and site-wide forms Yes2 Unknown Unknown
Hidden honeypots to trap spam bots Yes2 Unknown Unknown
Support and feedback Yes Yes Yes
Security protocol HMAC None None
Free for personal use Yes1 Yes Yes
Free for commercial use Yes1 No Yes

Have additions or corrections you'd like to suggest for this table? If so, please contact us.

1Some limitations on post volume apply. See Mollom's pricing page for more information.
2May only be supported on some of Mollom's many CMS platforms, due to differences in the underlying CMS.

Does Mollom support multilingual audible CAPTCHAS?

No, although the Mollom service is multilingual in nature, the audible CAPTCHA transcriptions are only provided in English.

Does Mollom brand its CAPTCHAs?

It depends on the type of your Mollom subscription.

CAPTCHAs generated on sites with a Mollom Free subscription automatically include a Mollom logo.

This logo is not displayed on sites using paid subscriptions. If the presence of the Mollom logo disrupts the appearance of your site, you can upgrade to a paid Mollom subscription.

How long does the block on a user last?

It depends -- user blocks are never permanent, but they can last for some time depending on the circumstances. There is no simple rule, but normally, it takes from a couple of hours to a couple of days. In a very severe case, it may take weeks for a malicious poster's reputation to return to normal. There is no automated method to expedite the removal of a block on a user, though in severe cases it can be done manually.