WordPress Users: Activate Akismet to Eliminate 97% of Your SPAM Comments.
The WordPress comment system on Posts and Pages (like the “Leave A Reply” section at the bottom of this Post) is vulnerable to getting Spam Comments. Who knows why people write programs to send wave upon wave of spam comments to our Posts, but they do.
Thankfully, every WordPress site comes with a totally adequate free plugin called Akismet. Akismet will eliminate almost all the Spam Comments before they ever reach you. The plugin is simple to activate. Once you start it up, it just simply starts working. If you ever worry that Akismet might be stopping more than you want (as if!) then you can look at the blocked comments, usually up to 30 days after they were blocked.
The only catch is that you need to prove that you, in fact, are human. This is Akismet’s way of verifying that you are the blog owner. And drawing breath. And mostly carbon-based. Etc. To do this, you need to get an API Key from WordPress. Below are the only slightly convoluted directions in how to do that.
To get an Akismet API Key
- Go to WordPress.com
- Click Sign Up Now
- Next page asks for information. Fill it out.
- You do NOT need to create a blog on WordPress to get the API Key, so you can select “Just a username, please.” If you decide to create a blog, it’s cool: you will still get the API Key.
- Once done with this, you will then be told that an email is being sent to activate the account.
- When the email arrives, be sure to click the activation link.
- After that, just wait. Another email will arrive titled “New WordPress.com User:…” This has your API in it, at the lower part of the message.
- The API Key will be a longish series of numbers and letters: “0hhj78c43sx”
- Save this API Key somewhere. It can be used multiple times.
