After getting enough daily comment spam to annoy me, I decided to activate Akismet, the WordPress spam-fighting plugin. Akismet is short for Automattic Kismet and comes installed with the WordPress installation. I thought that it would be automatically activated but I checked my plugin list and it wasn’t.
So what does Akismet do?
It is a spam-fighting web service created by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress and his team. Akismet checks the content of WordPress comments and trackbacks anonymously with an online server. Then determines if the comment is a spam or not. Each time someone comments on your WordPress blog, the comment is submitted to the Akismet web service. It has algorithms that will check and work out if the comment is a spam.
Akismet takes away the mundane chore of having to maintain a blacklist. It handles it for you.
What happens when a comment is flagged as a spam?
Akismet saves it in the database for 15 days before it automatically deletes it. You can check the flagged spam comments and if Akismet has wrongly flagged a comment which in fact is not a spam, you can correct it and submit information back to Akismet for analysis and improvement.
Akismet also learns as you use WordPress. What I mean by that is if Akismet missed flagging some comments and let it through and you manually mark it as spam, Akismet is notified and updates its database with the information. The more you use it, the more effective it becomes as a spam-fighting tool.
What do I have to do to activate and start using Akismet?
All you have to do locate Akismet from your plugin list and activate it. You also require a WordPress API key which you can get by registering an account at WordPress.com. The key will be sent to you in the WordPress.com activation email.
I understand from the terms and conditions on the Akismet website, it is free to use for personal use but if you are using it for commercial purpose, you require a commercial API key. Details are found at akismet.com.
Akismet is also available to use on other platforms besides WordPress.
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