Protect Your WordPress Blog from Spam

I’ve noticed that my WordPress blog is getting a lot of nonsense comments advertising viagra, casinos, and other things unrelated to my blog. How can I stop these spammers from spamming my blog?

Blog spam is a huge problem. According to the creators of WordPress, 95% of all comments are spam. One look at the Of Zen and Computing spam queue is enough to convince me. Fortunately, the WordPress creators have come up with an extremely effective solution to the problem of comment spam on blogs: Akismet. Automattic Akismet is a service that analyzes every comment posted to your blog, and puts the brakes on any that look like spam.

Download and Install Akismet

The first step to stopping spam is to download and install the Akismet plug-in. Hit the “Download Akismet” button, unzip the file, and then upload it to the wp-content/plugins/ directory. After the plug-in is uploaded, log into the WordPress administration panel (yoursite.com/wp-admin), click on Plugins, and click the “Activate” link next to “Akismet”.

Activate Akismet

Akismet requires an activation key in order to block spam for your blog. Akismet activation keys are free for personal use, and cost $5/month for commercial use. After obtaining your activation key, you need to give it to the Akismet plug-in.

1. Return to the WordPress administration panel.
2. Click on “Plugins”
3. Click on Akismet Configuration.
4. Enter your activation key into the form, and hit the “Update” button.

Once Akismet has your activation key and reports back that the key is valid, the service will begin scanning all incoming comments for spam. Anything that looks like spam will be deposited into the spam queue.

Akismet is extremely proficient at catching spam, but it does come up with a few false positives every once in a while. To rescue any valid comments from the spam queue, you should…

1. Log into WordPress and click “Manage”.
2. Click Akismet Spam.
3. Check off “Not Spam” next to any valid comments.
4. Click the “De-spam marked comments” button.