WordPress Plugins : Akismet

To start off my series of posts regarding WordPress plugins, I felt that I should first review the one plugin that comes with a clean install of WordPress that I ensure I enable straight away.

Akismet is a web service that checks each of your blog comments as they are made and attempts to determine whether they are legitimate or would be considered spam.  Looking at the stats in my WordPress dashboard, my installation of Akismet on this blog has caught 596 spam comments so far with an accuracy of 96.622%.

According to the Akismet website “86% of all comments are spam“.  If you aren’t using Akismet then you are leaving yourself wide open for a barrage of spam comments, especially as your blog has been online for a while.

Although I do occasionally get a ‘false positive’ (where Akismet has labeled a spam comment as being legitimate) the amount of time it saves me from going through each comment on a daily basis is enormous and best of all it is free.  You can download and use Akismet for free on your blog, as long as your return doesn’t exceed $500/month and if it does, you only have to pay $5/month for the privilege of using this great plugin.  The only requirement for this free service is to sign up for an API key via WordPress and you are all set.

If you have a blog, but you aren’t yet using Akismet to prevent spam comments on your blog then you need to download the plugin right away and get started.

This post has been the first of a variety I have planned regarding WordPress plugins that I make use of on a daily basis.  If you would like to keep track of the posts, sign up for my RSS feed or alternatively enter your email address in the form to the right and get them delivered directly to your email inbox.

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