A Red Herring Form is an invisible form that is meant to mislead a spammer. Since a spammer does not actually render the page, but looks for login or comment forms, I have added forms for which the intent is to mislead the spammers. If they submit the form it will go directly to the spam list.
In the past the red herring forms have broken some themes. I am experimenting right now by wrapping the whole section in a comment and placing it before the first page content. Not all pages will have these hidden forms. Not all themes will have them.
If the spammers are smart enough to ignore html comments then this will not work.
I should see some spammers caught in a few hours. If none are caught then I will have to wrap a hidden Div around the comments and risk breaking themes.
As soon as the add-on is tested I’ll make it available for testing. I will then try selling it on one of the pay WordPress sites.
Quick update! Before I finished this page a Chinese spammer had already hit the form 3 times.
I was never really sure where this Red Herring add-on sent the ip# … I thought they might go to the HoneyPot folks.
Anyway. … I think the Red Herring Add-on is great. … It is catching a large number of folk.