To keep my blog free from comment spam, I use the Akismet. I’ve been using this WordPress plugin since it was first released in 2005. If you’re not familiar with it, Akismet is a spam filtering service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages.
Earlier today, the WordPress dev team just released an update – Akismet 3.1.4.
This update clarifies the error messages that Akismet uses so that they’re easier to understand, and it enables link previews in the admin for all links in a comment – not just the author’s website link. A fix is also included for a bug that could have caused comment moderation emails to be sent for some comments that were caught as spam.
Aside from filtering comments, another feature I like is how Akismet displays the URLs in the comment body to reveal hidden or misleading links.
I get hundreds of spam comments each day so this plugin has saved me a lot of time and effort from having to check and filter every single comment that comes in, whether it’s legit or spam. In the past, Akismet had some issues with ham (legit comments) and flagging them as spam, so I had to check each time to make sure that there are no legit comments before I delete the spam comments. But that’s no longer an issue as recent versions of Akismet do a good job of filtering comments.
To help minimize the amount of spam comments, I use Akismet together with the Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin which adds a client side generated checkbox on the comment forms.
Btw if you want to use this plugin for your WordPress blog, you’ll need an Akismet.com API key which are FREE for personal blogs and available paid subscriptions for commercial websites.
Anyone else uses Akismet to fight spam on your WordPress blog? What do you like/dislike about this plugin? What’s the funniest or strangest spam comment you’ve seen? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
