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:

http://akismet.com/download/

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:

http://wordpress.org/tags/akismet

Anybody else getting more YouTube spam lately?

I have noticed a few more trickling in lately – so decided to do something about it. If you go visit your My Account page and hunt for around 10 minutes you will find a link for E-mail Options. From there, you can set YouTube to “Don’t send any emails for the above events”.

Hit save, and you should be all fixed up. No offense lovemeChristy72, your just not my kind of girl though.

Hello my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

My dog and I are still alive

Happy to hear they made it out of the E-mail alright. If he kills himself though, how will he eat his dog?

With that said, I found the tool I was looking for in Comment Timeout. This wonderful plugin allows you to:

• It lets you close comments on old entries that do not have an ongoing, active discussion.
• It examines your spam queue and your Bad Behavior logs to let you close comments and trackbacks across the board to troublesome IP addresses.
• It allows you to reject comments that contain too many hyperlinks, or links in BBCode format.

I have used this on the Web Hosting Show’s Web site for a few days now and have been enjoying the result. As soon as I get the time to do so, I’ll be rolling this out on all of my Web sites.

When I moved to my own hosting account with WordPress installed, my battle with spam got a heck of a lot easier.

For me, 99% of my spam and trackback spam is filtered out by the Askimet WordPress plugin. If Askimet doesn’t do it for you, or you need even more protection though – I have a few suggestions.

Spam Karma 2 – This plugin works by running all of your comments and trackbacks through a list of tests, and then grades it by “karma”. It also has a few other spam prevention tools built in as well. If Askimet wasn’t working for me, this would be my number two choice.

Comment Timeout – This neat tool allows you to turn commenting off for older posts. Chances are if they haven’t added a comment in a year, they never will. This will leave less holes for spammers to find to post their “v1agra” loving messages.

Bad Behavior – Bad Behavior is a set of PHP scripts which prevents spambots from accessing your site by analyzing their actual HTTP requests and comparing them to profiles from known spambots.

One word of caution, don’t go overboard with spam filtering or you are going to piss off your readers. If they have to jump through 20 hoops to post a comment and so that you can say you get no comment or trackback spam, you are not going to see too many new comments on your Web site.

You need to find the thin line between filtering crap and keeping comment posting easy for your readers.

Need more? Check out this list of anti-spam plugins via the WordPress Web site. The list looks a little out of date with some of the links, but should be a good place to get started at least.

1. WordPress Database Backup

Keeping a regular backup of your Web site or blog is always a good thing to do. What if something goes wacky with your Web host, and all your files and content are lost? Sure they might have a backup – but what if they don’t. Take care of yourself and keep a regular backup! I try to at least do backups once a week to once a month. At least this way I am for sure that not too much could go wrong.

2. Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports

I love both FeedBurner and Google’s Analytics tools, but it is a pain to have to go here and then go there to find out all these stats I am tracking. This WordPress plugin brings it all together for me on one nice single Web page.

3. Search Everything

No matter where your content is, you want to make sure it gets searched. This WordPress plugin makes note of all of your content (not just the blog posts) and makes it searchable via WordPress’s built in search engine. You don’t want people to miss any of your content so having this plugin is a necessity as well.

4. Google Sitemap Generator

We all want Google to pay more attention to us, right? Well, as confusing as the current Google Sitemap system is for regular folks, it is all we have to go by right now if we want to make sure Google is keeping an eye on us. This WordPress plugin creates your sitemap and also allows you to ping Google when you update it.

5. Smart Archives

Now as I have said before, and I will probably say again – I do not navigate via the archives that much. If I want to find something, I usually search for it. For those few times you need to have organized archives though, Smart Archives does the job better than the rest. The install is easy and when you are done you have a neat organized list of all your posts.

6. Optimal Title

When it comes to creating a Web site, having a good title is key. The Title is what grabs folks attention and it is also how you bring them in via the search engines. To make sure you title is “optimal” you need to pick up this WordPress plugin. It is key if you want clean titles that are search engine optimization (SEO) friendly.

7. Jerome’s Keyword Plugin

This might not be the best way to get tags into your WordPress blog, but it is simple. I have tried some of the other WordPress plugins for tags, and I always keep coming back to this one. It does the job, it does it well and you really can not ask for more than that.

8. FAlbum

Have a Flickr account and a WordPress blog? This WordPress plugin makes quick and easy work out of creating a gallery of all your latest and greatest photos from your Flickr account.

9. Akismet

The ultimate comment spam killer. Not much more can be said about this WordPress plugin that has not been said before. One of the main reasons I moved away from Blogware was because of the spam problems. Now I have no problems at all.

Now I am not the be all and end all as far as this list goes. Do you have any plugins that I might have missed? Let me know about it by leaving a comment and that way you will share your thoughts on the matter as well. If we are creating a list for he folks, then your suggestions and opinions are just as important as mine.

+ Check Out and Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 76!

+ Askimet

Askimet has pretty much killed everything it should have and plays nice with all my other stuff. Comparing my old Blogware 100 or more trackback and comment spam (a day/per blog) I got with this is like comparing apples to oranges. Askimet has at least saved me 20 minutes or more a day from deleting trackback spam to doing more important things.

+ Audio Player WordPress plugin

This is the perfect addition to any podcast’s Web site. I used this most of all on the Web Hosting Show’s new layout, but it might have to make an appearance on some of my other projects as well. Adding a player is as easy as typing in a few keystrokes into a post.

+ WordPress FeedBurner Plugin

This Plugin really helped me when it came to moving my Web sites from Blogware to WordPress. I love using FeedBurner, and didn’t want to give it up. The FeedBurner Plugin just needs a little setup and then you don’t have to worry about it ever again. I like that.

+ PXS Mail Form

Want to add a contact form to your WordPress Web site? This is the tool for you. All you need to do is configure, then cut and paste a little code in, and you are done.

There are many more great WordPress plugins that I didn’t mention as well. All and all, I have to say I am becoming happier and happier with my new WordPress setups.