Anti-spam plugin akismet. Installing the Akismet plugin and setting it up

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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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:

Select the Personal tariff plan 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 you received the letter with the API key. 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.

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 full protection is required, 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.

1. Automatically delete spam comments on posts older than a month;
2. 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.

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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 your kind 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 robots. 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.

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 will save you many hours in the future when administering your WordPress blog.