We have gotten many requests for a spam-blocking system on ScotBlogs and would like our users to get familiar with Akismet, a spam-blocking plugin that is now activated site-wide on all of the blogs on the server. I’ll begin with a few snippets from Akismet’s own FAQ site:
How does it work?
When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Do I have to maintain a blacklist?
Nope! Part of the idea of Akismet is that you’re always protected up-to-the-second from the latest dirty tricks of spammers. There’s no maintenance, no upgrading, no hassle.
Where does the spam go?
When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case you want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it. In the unlikely event something gets incorrectly identified as spam you can correct it and it submits the “false positive” back to Akismet for analysis and improvement of our system. If a spam comment happens to get through and you mark it as spam within WordPress, it does the same thing. Akismet becomes more effective the more you use it.
Help! Akismet is catching a regular comment as spam!
Don’t worry, if you see a regular comment on your Akismet page, just click the “Approve” button or the “Not Spam” checkbox and submit and the comment will be sent back to Akismet as a mistake. The system will learn from your submission, though it may take a day or so in some cases. False positives, as they’re called, are extremely rare and we watch them closely.
How do I get rid of the “Missing API Key” message on my ScotBlog Dashboard?
You can enter the Wooster.edu API key by navigating to Plugins -> Akismet Configuration from your Dashboard, and entering the following key into the appropriate field: 42ce38ac029f .
If you have any problems with your Akismet setup, please contact The Office of Web Communication.
