by Talina Norris

Created on: February 05, 2007   Last Updated: June 21, 2011

Akismet spam protection is an amazing tool for bloggers especially if you are being inundated with spam! Akismet is for you if have a free blog on wordpress.com or a self hosted blog with wordpress installed.

The best feature Akistmet has is the automatic spam filtering. Basically it will evaluate each comment submitted on your blog and will determine if it spam or not. Those comments that appear to be spam will not be posted immediately and you will have the chance to go through them and moderate them. If you don't have the time or patience to sort through all those comments Akistmet thinks are spam don't worry! After 15 days those possible spam comments will be removed for you automatically.

What is better is how Akismet learns and continually adapts! If you find that a non spam comment has accidentally ended up marked as spam all you need to do is check the "not spam" box and then select "de-spam marked comments" button. Akismet will learn from this mistake and will work better for you next time!

Sounds great huh? To get started with Akismet you just need to determine what version of wordpress you are using. Akismet comes with WordPress 2.0 and later by default but if you are running an older version of wordpress you can simply upgrade your wordpress instillation (http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress) or install the Akismet plugin (http://akismet.com/download/).

Once you have Akismet running all you need is your wordpress worpress API key in order to activate the Akismet spam protection. The only way you can obtain an API key is to sign up at wordpress.com.

Those of us who are hosting blogs on our own domains need to head over to wordpress.com and sign up for an account if you haven't already. This step is mandatory even though we already have our own accounts for our blogs on our own domains. This was the part that confused me but trust me you need to do it.

While signing up at wordpress.com you must go though all the steps to create a new blog (that you don't need since you are already hosting one on your domain), don't worry you wont be using this blog you just need to complete the sign up process.

Once you sign up and create a blog you can visit the "users" section in the top left hand corner of the page right under the support tab. In the "users" section you will find the "your profile" option. Click on the "your profile" option and you will see your API key (Your WordPress.com API key is: xxxxxxxxxxxx. Don't share your API key, it's like a password.)

All you need to do is copy the API key (it is case sensitive) and plug it in on your self hosted wordpress blog (under plugins it shows Akismet Configuration) and you will be all set!

Now all those porn and prescription pill spam comments are automatically marked as spam, you don't have to go through each one and delete them individually anymore. That mean you will have more time to actually write blog entries and do more important tasks!

Learn more about this author, Talina Norris.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.