Akismet plugin. Akismet: WordPress Comment Spam Plugin

Flexor 4.9

Updated:

I used to think that anti-spam plugins were needed only for the most popular blogs, but recently, on an almost completely empty blog, one particular post started receiving spam in the comments, not just a dozen spam messages, but one and a half thousand ( ! ) in 3 days. Every spam comment had a lot of links, so WordPress I didn’t miss any of them, but there was no way to sort through this pile of spam manually and I had to install a plugin that I usually immediately remove on a freshly installed blog, namely the most famous antispam plugin.

1 Unpack the archive.

2 Copy the folder to /wp-content/plugins/.

3 Go to the blog admin panel on the "tab" Plugins" and activate the plugin.

The plugin will immediately give you the following message:

When you click on this button you will be redirected to the page " Settings\Akismet", where you will be offered to receive API-key or enter it if you have already received it earlier:

If you do not have an API key, then click on the button " Get an API key", you will be redirected to the page http://akismet.com/wordpress/, where you must click on the large link in the center of the page:

Fill in the fields and click on " Sign up", the following page will open:

For free use need to choose tariff plan "Personal". Click on " Sign up", the following page will open:

By default we are asked to pay $36 per year for using the service, but we have a non-profit blog, so feel free to turn the bar to the number $0 :

The registration form will be reduced to a minimum:

Fill it out and click on " Continue", you will see this message:

After some time (it may take a minute or more), a page will open where your API-key:

The key can be copied directly from this page or copied from the letter received to your email. Now go to " Settings\Akismet" and enter your key in the appropriate field:

Click on " To plug" – plugin activation is complete:

That's it, now the plugin works (received by you API-key can be used on any number of your sites). There are almost no settings in the plugin:

Don't change anything in them - it often makes mistakes, and you can correct its errors manually by looking through the folder " Spam". What may be obvious spam for you may be the most ordinary comment.

Now a little about how it works: when someone leaves a comment on your blog, the plugin sends it to its server for verification. If the server does not consider it spam after testing, then the comment will be published. IN otherwise it will be marked as spam.

The creators of the plugin claim that the comment goes through hundreds of tests, but in practice the deciding factor will be the name and link to the website of the commentator. When you mark a comment as spam, it notes in the database on your server that such and such a name, together with such and such a link, was noticed in writing spam comments. When a certain “critical” mass of such comments is reached on all blogs, comments with this name and this link will begin to be marked as spam.

In theory, this looks great: someone marked a comment as spam and now a similar comment from that author will be marked as spam on your blog as well. But in practice, this means that if a dozen bloggers don’t like your comments and mark them as spam, then all your comments will now go to spam on all blogs where . This is bad because most bloggers do not look through the list of spam comments and do not pull out comments that were mistakenly included there.

Frauds are also common when an attacker uses your name and a link to a website, leaving deliberately spam comments on blogs. Sooner or later you will be blacklisted. I don't know how to deal with this. But knowing about this possible development of events, do not be lazy to look through comments on your blog that are marked as spam - it is quite possible that non-spam comments also ended up there.

Gives you the opportunity to show how much spam he has eliminated on the blog. To do this, use the following code:

Or just add a widget:

And then you will get this spam counter:

The appearance of this counter can be easily customized via css-code in a file in the folder " _inc" plugin. But I don’t recommend using this widget - it is active link to the site, and not every webmaster needs an active external link.

IN latest versions keeps a “history” of comments, makes it possible to quickly delete a link to the commentator’s website, highlights links in the comment text, etc. I will not describe these functions of the plugin, since they are obvious to anyone who has installed the plugin.

PS. This updated version(July 2014) original article from 2008. After 6 years of using the plugin, I want to give you advice - use it in conjunction with any other anti-spam protection! Why? For a trivial reason - without additional protection, you will constantly have thousands of comments on your blog marked as spam.

It does its job of detecting spam very well, but it doesn't stop spam comments from appearing on a blog, it just identifies them. No person in their right mind would look through thousands of spam comments in order to dig out one that was mistakenly included among them. The solution to this problem is additional protection– for example, using captchas in the comment form.

But personally, I’ve been using my own invention on this and other blogs for several years now. Be sure to check it out. In a nutshell, this protection tricks spam scripts and prevents them from writing a spam comment at all. And at the same time it does not interfere with ordinary blog visitors. As a result, it turns out that automatic spam you won’t have it on your blog, and few manual spam comments will be caught or

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 spam in WordPress comments is deleted, and only real 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. At this point, setting up Akismet Anti-Spam WordPress can be considered complete.

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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