The first thing I did when I went back to blogging was to make sure my WordPress installation was up-to-date so I upgraded it to the latest version which was WordPress 2.6.1. I also updated all the plugins that I have via the Plugins section of the dashboard. One of the plugins I updated was Akismet and at that time, the version available was 2.1.7. All upgrades went smoothly and I was able to post my last entry, reply to some comments, check blog stats and other stuff.
Because of the 3 month long hiatus, I wasn’t able to do much with my blog except for approving comments. Spam comments have piled up and numbered at the thousands. No matter how much spam comments I have, I always make it a habit/practice to check the spam queue for valid comments. When I was done going through the list, I clicked on the Delete All button and waited for the spam comments to disappear. It was taking quite a while to finish and at first I thought it was taking long because of the large amount of spam comments I had but when I saw that the browser stopped loading and the spam comments were still there I knew something was wrong. Anyways, I tried doing it again and ended up repeating the process like three times to no avail.
The next thing I did was to do a Google search for “akismet can’t delete spam” and found this entry at the WordPress support forums. It turns out that the current version I was using, 2.1.7 had a bug – the Delete All option didn’t work, a bug that is specific to this version of Akismet. Previously, the only way to fix it was to revert to an earlier version, Akismet 2.1.6. Shortly after the bug was found, the folks over at Automattic released a newer version – Akismet 2.1.8 which fixed the bug. After reading this I immediately upgraded Akismet, went to my spam queue, clicked on the Delete All button and VIOLA!, all the spam comments disappeared.
In case you’re experiencing the same problem with “un-deleteable spam comments” or if you’re still running an older version of Akismet and plan to do an upgrade make sure you upgrade to the latest version which is Akismet 2.1.8 to fix/avoid this bug.
@trench – Since I go through the spam queue, I delete spam comments about 2-3 times a week. My, that sure is a lot of spam comments! :D
I delete once a week. Doesn't take long at all. Over 300,000 spam comments caught since I installed it! Thats just insane for a single blog! LOL
@Joie – What version were you previously using? Did you also had issues deleting spam comments?
I updated mine too and it is really helpful.
@jhay – I know its very time consuming but I found out that there are some legit comments that get flagged as spam so now I make sure I go through the spam queue and check. Akismet Auntie Spam makes it easy for me to do that. :)
I got lazy in reviewing every comment in the spam queue I just leave it all to Akismet to automatically delete everything at the end of the month.
Damn spammers!