According to real statistics (no, not the made up statistics I usually talk about) Akismet has blocked 9,971,434,465 spam comments to date.
Akis-what? Akismet, a nifty little plugin that ships with WordPress is “a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.” In short, it’s something very useful for WordPress bloggers.
Akismet is already installed on your new WordPress blog. All you have to do is activate it. This is done partially in your WordPress Backend and partially on the WordPress.com website (where you’ll apply for an API key in order to run Akismet).
Get a WordPress API Key
In an Internet browser, visit http://www.wordpress.com and click on the “Sign Up Now” button. You’ll be re-directed to the New Account page where you need to create a username and password, tell WordPress your email address, and instruct WordPress that you want “Just a Username Please”. Then click ‘Next’. Note: the username and password you choose should be relevant and memorable.
Confirm your details
WordPress will send an email to the address you listed above, asking you to verify your account with them.
In the email message there will be an activation link. Click the link and you’ll be taken to a new WordPress.com page advising you that your WordPress.com account is now active.
If you’re feeling adventurous you can continue browsing the WordPress.com Dashboard, but for the sake of this lesson, you’re done with WordPress.com.
Close the browser and check your email again. There will be a second email from WordPress.com telling you your account has been successfully set up.
At the bottom of the email is a short note saying: API Key: xxxxxxxxxx with a random string of numbers and letters. Keep this number handy because you’ll need it in a moment.
Activate Akismet
It’s time to log into your WordPress blog (not WordPress.com). If you’re not too sure how to do this, a quick read of my How to Login to WordPress tutorial will help you.
In your WordPress Dashboard, click on the ‘Plugins’ tab on your left hand navigation bar. This will whisk you off to the Plugins pane of your WordPress Backend.
Scrolling down the page a little, you’ll see an option called ‘Akismet’, with 2 menu options on the right titled ‘Activate’ and ‘Edit’. Click on the ‘Activate’ link.
WordPress will now activate the Akismet plugin and pop-up a little box at the top of the screen asking for your WordPress API key.
Click on the link ‘enter your WordPress.com API key’ and on the next screen, enter the API key you were sent by email in step 2 above. You may as well also check the ‘Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month’ box as well. Click on the ‘Update Options’ button, and you’re done.
Congratulations, your WordPress blog is now mostly protected from comment spam. I say ‘mostly’ because although Akismet is brilliant, the occasional (maybe 1 in 1000) spam comment does slip through the cracks.
Now you can stop advertising Viagra and fake Rolex watches for spammers and concentrate on moderating comments from your readers. Speaking of comments, please leave one below if you have questions or you’d just like to say Hi.
Hello, I’m Dave. I work with web design agencies, freelancers and bloggers to develop standards-compliant WordPress and Thesis themes.
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I just started my blog today, and this is great information. Thanks, Dave!
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Than you Dave! Your post, like your all other posts, is very helpful and to the point. Excellent job.
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Glad it’s helping you. I’ll be posting more on WordPress use over the next couple of weeks so come back soon. And best of luck with your new blog.
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