One of the first things you will want for any website that has comments enabled is anti-spam software. Akismet is one of the most popular wordpress plugins for handling spam comments. It works very well to filter out the obvious (and not so obvious) spam into your spam folder so you have less work to do. It’s quick and easy to install and you can choose a pricing plan that suits your website – from ‘pay what you want’ Personal plans to business/corporate plans.
1. Install the Akismet plugin
From your wordpress dashboard go to the ‘Add New’ option under ‘Plugins’
Type Akismet into the search box and then install the software.
2. Activate Akismet
You can do this from the same screen or go to the ‘Installed Plugins’ section to activate it from there.
3. Akismet Account Creation
You will now see a banner at the top of your plugins section asking you to activate your Akismet account.
This takes you to a page where you can either enter your Akismet activation key if you already have one (go to step 4), or use the ‘Get your API key’ button which will take you to a webpage where you can set up your Akismet account.
The ‘Activate Akismet’ button will bring you to the section where you choose the type of plan you need.
You can choose the appropriate plan here. If your blog/website is not a business then you can choose the Personal Plan
With the personal plan you move the slider to choose the amount you want to pay for the software, then the Continue button to receive your API key
4. Enter Akismet API key
You now enter the API key you have been provided with to complete the activation process
5. Akismet Spam Comment Management
You can see in your wordpress dashboard an overview of the comments that Akismet has marked as spam.
When it finds spam it will update the count
You can review the spam comments and choose what to do with them, or you can choose to ‘Empty Spam’ to delete all spam comments permanently
Akismet will now monitor any new comments and automatically mark any comments it recognises as spam accordingly.
