Out of all the years I have been using WordPress, I have probably not used one plugin more often than I have used Askimet. Now that might be because it rocks, or because it came with WordPress, so it was kind of always “there”. Love it or hate it, it does get the job done when it comes to filtering out spam comments from your WordPress blog.
The way it works is it checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, then you can review if necessary.
Akismet Says I Need an API Key. Where Do I Get That?
WordPress.com has what’s called “API keys” which allow you to use services and enhancements built on the WordPress.com platform. This allows you to leverage the power of WP.com while still hosting your blog elsewhere.
All you have to do is sign up for a WordPress.com account, and you will get your API key to add to your Akismet settings so it will work.
I Deleted Akismet Before I Knew How Awesome it Was. How Can I Get it Back?
You can download the spam comment fighting plugin here:
How Can I Show a Badge of How Many Spam Comments I Have Filtered Out?
If you want to put the Akismet fear of God into any spam commenters looking at your site as a target, just cut and paste this tag into your template:
<?php akismet_counter(); ?>
That will display how many spam comments Akismet has caught for you.
I Am Getting a Akismet 2.1 Parse Error. How Can I Fix It?
You can find a fix here or better yet, upgrade Akismet to the latest version, which fixes this bug that was in the Akismet 2.1 release.
Where Can I Find More Help for Akismet?
Try searching the WordPress.org forums. Using the “akismet” tag, you are bound to turn up a lot of results to browse through too:
