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WordPress is a powerful blogging platform that makes blogging so easy. There are many themes to choose from and many plugins to make life easier.

Spam on the other hand is something that plagues all bloggers. Individuals find a way to leave comments on your blog that are generally links to sites that you would never even consider linking to. The main culprits are pornographic and gambling sites but you can get spammed by any site.

There are several things you can do prevent to spam. By far the easiest is to use a plugin. The best plugin is Akismet. This plugin works a little like anti viral software in that it has a database of rogue sites and spam terms. Akisment sits in the background and waits until a comment is left. Once a comment is left Askismet scans it to see if it fits withing the spam category. If it is identified as spam, Akismet flags the comment and saves into a moderation queue.

Once in the moderation queue it sits there for 15 days. During that time and you can go in and reviews the comments. If you determine that the comment is not spam and you can mark it as not spam and it will be published along with all the other comments. Akismet will also make note that this is not spam so that next time a similar comment is left it is not removed from the comments database.

If you decide that it is spam you can either leave it where it will be auto deleted after 15 days or you can manually delete it.

Prior to using Akisment I had to manually go through all the comments and review them and then manually delete those that were spam. Aksimet automates this process which then leaves me free for more important tasks.

There are other plugins that you can use which all have similar results. It is just a matter of finding the right one and getting comfortable with it. Since I installed this pluging it has intercepted over 300 spam attempts, in all in a matter of three weeks. This means that in the past I have spent a lot of time reviewing and deleting spam comments or that quite a few have got past me and are in the system.

Spam is curse on the blogging world and is almost impossible to stop at its source. Using a plugin like Akismet certainly makes life easier.

Learn more about this author, Les Scammell.
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