WordPress anti-spam protection plugin akismet. Akismet Anti-Spam plugin: fighting spam in comments on WordPress

Hi all! Every novice blogger sooner or later faces the problem of spam, it’s inevitable. Automatic spam bots go around websites and leave comments with links. Removing such spam manually is very labor-intensive, and it doesn’t make sense, because WordPress has many anti-spam tools. Today I will talk about one of them - the Akismet plugin. I also advise you to read the article about.

Akismet plugin: description

So, to avoid unpleasant situations and spend your time profitably, you only need to install one plugin. In addition to it, you can add the Aprove only Russian comments plugin if your blog does not have a foreign audience, but this is not necessary.

A good alternative to Akismet that I know is the WP-SpamFree plugin. You can also install a captcha in the comments (Captcha plugin), but Captcha forces the user to enter characters security code from the picture, which are difficult to see. For this reason, many site visitors will choose to simply not leave a comment, because no one likes captchas.

I recommend Akismet for WordPress not only because it works great and protects your site from spam attacks. The advantage of this plugin is that Akismet itself filters comments, comparing them with those in its database. As a result, all WordPress comment spam is removed and only the actual comments from your readers are published on the site page (although I still prefer to moderate them manually). Akismet does not require any captchas and does not interfere with user activity in any way.

Installing and configuring the Akismet plugin

The installation is standard, just find the plugin in the list in the blog admin area. After activation, go to the menu Settings -> Akismet. Next, in the settings panel that opens, you need to enter the Akismet API key, without which the plugin will not be able to work correctly. I would like to say right away that obtaining the Akismet API Key is free and very simple, which is undoubtedly encouraging.

How to activate Akismet - get the key

The sign that appears informs us about the possibility of purchasing Akismet API Key for money or free of charge. Happy owners of their own blogs need to select Personal, and then fill out all the fields. The main thing is to move the slider indicating the cost of the key to zero.

Fill out all the fields and click the button Continue, we have received an individual Akismet API key. Now it’s a small matter: insert the key into the plugin configuration, update the settings and enjoy the absence of spam in the comments of your WordPress blog.

I hope the article was useful, bye everyone!

P.S. Today I wrote my resignation letter! It's time to go on vacation, because soon we are going on a trip to Europe. And who will let me go on vacation if I have only worked for 3 months? I’ll have to quit :) I can’t sit in the office, I wish the blog would start generating additional income, then I’ll be able to travel as much as I want!)

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20 reviews

1. Anatoly

   I like it, yours is beautiful! Creatively! I am studying at the Start Up project. Advanced course. I like! How are you? How much time did it take you to build and organize the work of the site? How much do you devote to him now? I propose to be friends with our site building colleagues. Which way is more correct? What to do in such a developing situation? I'll write and ask our colleagues. I'm sure we'll find the answer! I wish you success in your creative endeavors and worthy prosperity. The most important thing is strength of spirit! Keep it up! Come visit! I will be glad to see you! And there will be spring!

2. Igor

   Thank you, Anatoly, for good words. I pay a lot of attention while the blog is in its infancy. “The first half of your life you work for your name, then the name works for you.” Remember?

3. xerox 250

   Tell me, is it possible to post this post on your website?

4. Igor

   To avoid a complete duplicate, it is not advisable to post the entire article; a short excerpt with an indexed link to the source is acceptable.

5. angina

   What if you created a “hottest discussions” section or something similar on your blog site. There you can discuss the hottest topics on your blog...

6. Igor

   Of course, such features are very useful, but I’ll have to wait a bit, I just can’t do it right now. In fact, there are a lot of ideas, but every single one requires time, which is sorely lacking.

7. Mikhail Zayats

   Thank you, good article. Subscribed.

8. Oksana

   Igor, please tell me, is there any way to complain about spam? The fact is that my site is constantly receiving spam from the same IP address in the comments to the same article, judging by the links from somewhere in Russia or Ukraine. Moreover, everything is presented as an ordinary comment, such as “cool article”, etc. Every day several comments arrive with different text and the links are all different. I constantly have to clean out my spam folder. It doesn’t seem difficult to clean, but they just took it out already. In addition, sometimes normal comments end up in spam, and you have to look through each one to weed out the unnecessary ones. Maybe I can somehow complain about this IP address somewhere?

9. Igor

   Oksana, this is indeed a problem and a very big one. Although Akismet quite copes with the task of filtering out outright spam, sometimes, in fact, it is necessary to carry out manual moderation. If there is anyone I hate fiercely in this life, it is spammers, although I myself am a completely peace-loving person and not at all a misanthrope. So I completely understand you and will be happy to help in any way I can, by the way, perhaps this will be useful to other readers. So, try the following. Open the .htaccess file in the root directory for editing and add the following fragment there:

   order allow,deny allow from all deny from ip 1 deny from ip 2 deny from ip 3 deny from ip 4

   Instead of ip with numbers, you need to put down real IPs that you do not like. There can be as many “deny from” lines as you like. This should help block the hateful spammers who annoy you the most.

10. Oksana

    Thank you, Igor, I’ll definitely try it. Just one more question: I have only three lines in the .htaccess file, can I simply insert your fragment at the end under these lines? Sorry for what may be a stupid question.

11. Igor

    Well, why stupid, in no way. Yes, Oksana, insert it at the very end, just don’t forget to put real numbers (only numbers) of the IP address. There is no need to use IP designators.

12. Oksana

    Igor, I did as you said. I inserted these lines:

    order allow,deny
    allow from all
    deny from 178.137.162.227
    deny from 46.118.159.131

    The result is 50/50 so far. Spam continues to come from the upper IP, but not yet from the lower one (the most spam came from it).
    Maybe I misunderstood something and wrote it down incorrectly?
    Thank you for your support and help.

13. Oksana

    For some reason, the first () and last () lines of the fragment were not displayed in the comment. Naturally, they are registered with me.

14. Igor

    The lines were not displayed because WordPress mercilessly eats the code. And so you did everything right. I think we need to wait a few more days to be sure. You say that spam has stopped coming from one of the IP addresses, which means that either this design does not work at all, or it will work 100 percent. By the way, the correct operation of the .htaccess file may also depend on the hosting; if our plan fails, try contacting the hosting support service. If we can’t find out anything there either, we will continue to fight, just write after a while how you are doing.

15. Oksana

    Igor, thanks for the answer. I’ll watch a little more and, if it doesn’t help, I’ll contact the hosting (Sprinthost), as you advise. The good news is that the most harmful (in terms of quantity) spam has stopped arriving. I'll be sure to post the results.
    I still have questions on other topics, if you don’t mind if I torture you some more?

16. Oksana

    A week has passed. The spam from the second IP got through several times, but the first one also appears. I can’t say that there is no result at all, since in my opinion spam has started to get through less often.
    Contacting the hoster's support service also did not help. They demanded from me a password for the site admin panel, and in the end they issued the following letter: “Most often, spam messages are sent by a robot. To protect your site from unwanted comments, we can recommend that you install a plugin that adds a captcha for sending comments. You can find an example of such a plugin by following the link http://wordpress.org/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/."
    But the point is that you don’t want to clutter up the comment form with captchas; not everyone likes it, but it just annoys them. That's why I have the Antispam Bee plugin.

17. Igor Gornov

    I'm happy for you, Galina, please.

Akismet checks your comments and contact form submissions against our global spam database to ensure your site does not publish harmful content. You can view the spam comments it catches on the Comments screen in your blog's admin panel.

Main features of Akismet Anti-Spam:

• Automatically scans all comments and blocks those that look like spam.
• Each comment has its own status history, making it easy to check which comments have been blocked or approved by Akismet, and which have been marked as spam or not spam by a moderator.
• Link addresses are displayed directly in the comment body to help identify hidden or misleading links.
• Moderators can view the number of approved comments for each user.
• A reset feature that blocks the worst spam comments will help you save your disk space and speed up your site.

To use the plugin, you need to get an Akismet.com API key. For personal blogs, the keys are free; Paid subscriptions are available for companies and commercial sites.

Setting up the Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress plugin

First you need to activate the plugin and proceed to obtain the Akismet.com API key.

I'll assume that you don't have an API key and need to activate Akismet. Click on the “Get API key” button.

You should be redirected to the page //akismet.com, where you also need to click on the API key activation button.

The next step is to start account in WordPress.com, it may be useful in the future for obtaining an avatar - Gravatar, used in some security plugins, in Jet Pack from WordPress.com, in general it will still be useful.

They are certainly cunning guys. Don’t be alarmed when, after registering your account, you will be redirected to the purchase page paid tariff Akismet Anti-Spam plugin. Right in top corner faded letters indicate a link to change the tariff plan. That's where we need to go.

But here, too, the guys want to cheat.

• 1 — If you don't want to pay, set the slider with the price tag to 0.
• 2 - Specify the site on which Akismet Anti-Spam will work.
• 3 - Come up with a name.
• 4 - Come up with another name. I entered the same names in these fields.
• 5 - Click the Continue button.

Finally, we activate Akismet on the site.

Small settings for Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress

Everything is clear here, I think there will be no difficulties at this stage of setup. That's it for Akismet setup Anti-Spam WordPress can be considered completed.

Alternative

If spammers don’t like your site too much, or you don’t want to bother with activating a key, you can do without this plugin. You just need to set the moderation setting for each comment manually in the discussion settings.

Settings => Discussion =>

Hello, friends! In this article we will look at one of the the best ways combat spam in comments using the Akismet plugin, let's look at getting a key and setting up the plugin.

Removing comment spam using the Akismet plugin

In the Infobusiness, many novice bloggers do not install protection against spam in comments; they consider this work premature. As articles appear on the blog, the first comments on the site appear, and with them spam in the comments.

As long as the number of visitors to the blog is not large (100 – 200 people), everything is fine. In the blogosphere, it is generally accepted that spam in comments can be removed manually, as long as there are not many of them. But as the number of visitors grows, as well as the appearance of your site in various databases, the amount of spam in comments increases sharply. Moreover, robots send spam in the comments.

It happens that a thousand or more spam comments can come in a day (I read about 3,000 received in a day). After this, the victims begin to establish protection. For sites made on the WordPress engine, install the Akismet plugin.

But it is not always possible to install the Akismet plugin correctly due to the lack of a key. I think the reason is that the pages on English language, and the correct translation is not always made, which is where errors arise. After failure, people try to install alternative security options, but this is not always the best option.

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Reading time: 7 min

Akismet is one of the must-have plugins on most blogs. Its purpose is to combat spam in an empirical way (i.e., based on experience): by comparing each new comment with the spam database on its servers, Akismet decides whether to pass it or not. If a comment is considered spam, it automatically ends up in the Spam folder of the same name.

Previously, I already explained how you can fight spam by banning individual IP addresses () and banning an entire rank of IP addresses (). Here we will talk about a slightly different method.

Judging by the statistics of the Akismet service itself, about 10% of comments mistakenly end up in spam. For this reason you have 30 days to pull them out of the Spam folder if the corresponding checkbox is checked in the settings (more on this below).

If this plugin did not come with WordPress by default, then download it from the official repository using the link at the end of the article and install ().

After installing and activating the plugin in the blog admin panel (Plugins -> Installed -> Akismet (activate)), click on the Plugins section again and select Akismet Configuration (Settings):

We have a field where you need to enter a unique API key. You can get it on the Akismet website, and it's free. Click on the link marked with the arrow:

After this we go to the website akismet.com, where we need to do the following:

Choose tariff plan Personal and click on the Sign UP button (click to enlarge the picture):

After this, we need to fill out the 4 fields presented and move the slider to the left so that the amount becomes $0 (i.e. we will not pay anything for using their service):

• First Name - name (any in Latin)
• Last Name - surname (also any in Latin)
• Email is the name of the mailbox where your key will be sent, so enter the one you use
• Confirm Email - repeat the mailbox name

Just below you can select the option to receive a monthly report by email. This is at your discretion. When everything is ready, click the blue Continue button and go to your Mailbox, where the letter with the API key arrived. At the beginning of the letter they thank you for registering, and then there will be a block of text Your Akismet API key is: ********, where: ****** is your key, which we copy and paste into the field under the red arrow:

Additional options are indicated in green. I advise you to choose automatic deletion, but with displaying the number of comments, decide for yourself. This does not play a fundamental role.