Akismet: WordPress comment spam plugin. Akismet Anti-Spam plugin: fighting spam in comments on WordPress Installing and configuring the Akismet plugin
Hello, friends! In this article, we will look at one of the best ways to combat comment spam using the Akismet plugin, 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 are in English, and the correct translation is not always done, hence the errors. After failure, people try to install alternative security options, but this is not always the best option.
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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 security code characters 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!)
Good afternoon, aspiring bloggers and those who are planning to join them.. I will tell you about a free WordPress anti-spam plugin - Akismet Anti-Spam - it will help you get rid of the routine work of filtering the right commenters from the wrong ones.
The plugin is convenient because it does not force readers to do additional actions if they want to write something under one of your posts - no mathematical problems or captchas will pop up.
Akismet works differently - it looks at each comment, checks whether it contains signs of spam and either skips it or throws it in the spam folder. The analysis is based on statistical data collected from all sites - the reason for the ban may be dangerous links, suspicious texts, names or IP addresses of commentators.
The accuracy of the plugins is very high. It is extremely rare that normal comments end up in spam (in all the several years of blogging, I have not seen even a dozen such cases).
In addition to spam in comments, Akismet can work in symbiosis with (feedback forms) and prevent spam there as well.
In a word, the thing is very convenient and is one of the must-have plugins that I recommend.
Video instructions for installing and configuring Akismet
UPD: After changing the appearance of the site where you need to get the Akismet API key, some people cannot find the free version of the key - look carefully, it is there (I can’t update the picture in the video)!
As you can see, the plugin does not require any special settings, the entire installation of Akismet along with debugging takes only a couple of minutes, but it will save you many hours in the future when administering your WordPress blog.
Greetings to all dear readers! I think each of you knows what spam is, but not everyone understands what methods you can use to get rid of it. Today there are a large number of ways to combat spam, but spammer programs do not sleep and try to attack inexperienced, usually novice, bloggers.
Of course, spammers (robots) will also want to attack old blogs, but it is useless to do anything, because there is full protection, so young sites better warn themselves and read this article.
One effective way to protect yourself is the Akismet plugin.
What is this Akismet plugin?
This is one of the best plugins that is designed to combat spam comments on blogs running the WordPress engine. It is already installed by default. When you log into the administrative panel of your site, you can see the following inscription at the top of the page:
Akismet is almost enabled, if you want it to be operational then enter your Akismet API key. If something like this doesn’t appear for you, although it should, or maybe you delete it, accidentally or not, it doesn’t matter, then you can download this plugin on the administrative site of WordPress.org.
After downloading, open it and drop it via FTP connection into the folder with plugins on the hosting. It is located at your site-wp-content-plugins. Did you put Akismet there? Placed! Then go to the admin panel of the blog and activate it.
We'll talk about setting it up below. Now I will tell you about the features of the WordPress plugin. What functions does it have, how does it work, in general, why install it at all.
What is this plugin for?
This is a pressing question that plagues many in the blogosphere. I will try to say about this in as much detail as possible. The Akismet plugin works like this:
Its database contains data about spam. Based on the analysis, it discards some comments as spam, but if the comment does not correspond to the information that is registered in the database, then it goes to you for moderation.
I would like to immediately warn you that there are also cases when a well-written comment ends up in the spam folder. This rarely happens. What to do in such a situation? Everything is very simple! You will have to look through SPAM and if a normal comment gets there, throw it out on hold.
Believe me, this will happen, so it should have been said about it. These are the so-called errors in the Akismet database, which are the only drawback of this plugin. Well, if so, then you definitely need to install it and configure it on your website.
How to install and configure Akismet?
As already discussed above in the article, the plugin should be installed by default. Go to the PLUGINS section, it is located in the left column of the admin panel of your blog and check whether it is there or not. No, then upload it to the hosting, as was written earlier, scroll up the article and you will find it.
If it is in front of you, that is, in the “plugins” section, then click ACTIVATE. The button is located immediately after the name, in our case Akismet.
Now a green rectangle with a blue window will appear in front of you in the administrative panel of the blog at the top: activate your plugin account. Click on it and you will be taken to this page.
Here you will enter the key, if, of course, you have one. Otherwise, make the transition to GET an API key.
Goes to the official website of the plugin - akismet.com. Translate the page into Russian to make it clear. This can be done by clicking the TRANSLATE button, it is located in the address bar of the browser on the right side, at least in my Mozilla Firefox.
You are now on the WordPress.com website on the data entry page. Here you need to enter your email address, username - login and password. We see that the green checkmark lights up, that is, approved, and click subscribe, and so on twice. You should receive an email with an activation code, which you must enter in the field; if you forgot, let me remind you that it is located at SETTINGS = akismet.
If you are using an older version of WordPress, then the plugin settings can be found in the PLUGINS=Akismet Settings section.
With this I think everything is clear. I hope no one has any difficulties. Now you need to enter the key and make a couple of settings. Quite simply, we carry out the remaining steps. Mark or leave unchanged.
- Automatically delete spam comments on posts older than a month;
- Display the number of approved comments next to each author;
At your request. The first point says that if a spam comment is left on an article that was posted later than one month, then it automatically goes to the trash and does not end up in the spam folder.
The second one is clear, by checking this item you will know how many comments your reader left. After you have done everything, you can set a counter for blocked spam comments, also if you wish. I don’t advise you to put it on your blog, since unnecessary external links are not good.
I end the article on this note. I wish everyone a successful fight against spam comments. Until next time. Bye! In conclusion, here is an interesting video about the Akismet plugin:
Sincerely, Yuri Zhuk.
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 create an account in WordPress.com, it may be useful in the future to get 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 for the paid plan of the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin. In the upper right corner, in faded letters, there is 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 =>