A-A-AKISMET! … Gehsundheit

Yes, I know it’s Thursday.
Yes, I know I’m late with this.
Yes, I know I need to fold clothes … oh wait, that doesn’t apply here.

If you can forgive all that, we can move on.

Now, first things first. How many of you have gotten jiggy with the self-hosted WordPress blog? Show of hands? Er…wait, I meant … Comments?! Okay, well let me say this – JUST DO IT. If I can force myself to join and then GO to a gym – even to the fart-inducing, fat-stretching Yoga – you can get your own web hosting and install your own blog, using our very easy steps over at ditch your blogging training wheels.

Today we’ll tackle the thing that drives all web-addicted individuals crazy – SPAM! Fortunately, WordPress knows that we hate spam, so along with every version comes the wonderful Akismet Plugin. What is Akismet, you say? Akismet is your friend. It is your blog’s firewall against rolex watches and penis enlargement endorsements posting to your comments. Niiiiiiiiiiiice.

Akismet is fun.
Akismet is nice.
Akismet won’t allow the same spam twice.

Bottom line, it checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. And then? IT REMEMBERS.

You can’t blog without it, so let’s get a move on.

Installing the Akismet Plugin

As I said before Akismet is already installed for you, but it’s up to you to activate it. So, let’s login to our WordPress admin area (http://www.domain.com/wp-admin).

Are you at your WordPress Dashboard? No worries – we’ll wait for you to get there. Once at the Dashboard, scroll along the tabs in the left, vertical, navigation menu and look for the text-link, “Plugins”. Click on it.

This will open your Plugins window. Click on the text link to “Activate” the Akismet plugin already installed.

Once activated, scroll down the left, sidebar navigation menu again and click on the textlink for “Plugins > Akismet Configuration”.

This opens the “Akismet Configuration” page where it says:

“For many people, Akismet will greatly reduce or even completely eliminate the comment and trackback spam you get on your site. If one does happen to get through, simply mark it as “spam” on the moderation screen and Akismet will learn from the mistakes. If you don’t have an API key yet, you can get one at Akismet.com.”

As you can see, I have a valid Akismet API Key (and the numbers entered there are not it, of course).

If there isn’t an Akismet API Key entered, WordPress will prompt you to grab your own Akismet API Key. Though it is not pictured here, you simply follow the white text-link in the mustard colored box where it says “Please enter an API key. (Get your key.)”

This link will take you to the Akismet for WordPress Homepage.

From there, click the blue button that says, “Get an Akismet API Key” to take you to the API Key Signup Page.

You will note there are a few different plans, but that if you are a personal blogger you can simply sign-up and pay what you want by clicking the blue, “Signup” text-link in the small print under the multiple plan options.

Use the sliding scale on the next page to decide how much Akismet is worth to you as a personal blogger – anywhere from $0.00/month to $10.00/month. Please remember their stipulation, “If your site is for a business, if it makes money from ads, or if it promotes a product or service, you should pick from one of our paid account options.”

Follow all the way through the Signup process to get your Akismet API Key, then go back and enter it on the Akismet Configuration page and click the “Update Options” button below.

With your API Key in place, your Akismet Spam Plugin is activated AND functioning.

You can watch how much spam it catches by clicking on the text-link for “Comments” in the left sidebar, vertical navigation bar. Once in the Comments area, find the Spam text link at the top of the page. It will show the number of current “caught” spam.

You can see I now have ZERO spam in my spam folder.

Depending on your Comment settings, things can/could get hung up in spam that aren’t truly spam. That’s okay, because you can click to mark non-spam items as non-spam and Akismet will remember for the next go-around.

That Akismet is purty darn smart.