This hat is the best blog comment spam filter ever… not. 
Actually, the best blog comment spam filter is the one that comes with WordPress. It was developed by Matt Mullenweg and is called Akismet.
Akismet checks comments posted to your blog against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam and you can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”
Akismet is now catching approximately 1500 spam comments per day here at the NPT blog.
In the picture below, you’ll note that there were 4,731 comments in the Akismet filter waiting to be trashed (I emptied the trash about 3 days before I took the screen capture) and that the plugin had caught 67,694 blog spam comments since I first installed it.
I just noticed that Akismet picked up 10 more spam comments in the time that it took me to write this post!
To use Akismet, you will need a WordPress API key. To activate Akismet, go to “Plugins”, scroll down to “Akismet” and click “Activate”. Enter the API key at the “Akismet Configuration” page, also under the “Plugins” tab.
As your blog gets more and more traffic, you’ll be SO glad you installed Akismet! I certainly am!
[tags]Akismet,wordpress,plugin,blog,comment,spam[/tags]
About Rosalind Gardner
Akismet and I are good, good friends. I can’t imagine trying to blog without a good spam catcher. I know there are others out there, but I’ve never tried any other one.
Hi Rosalind – Great hat. I’m wondering if your spam filter may be a little too aggressive though?
I replied to one of your posts on Roamsters and asked about the best places to travel in Canada and it looks like Askimet has eaten my comment.
Maybe you could do a post on the best of Canada for first timers or something please?
I dunno which is better, the captcha or akismet? What do you think Ros?
Well so far, I can say that Akismet is the most helpful plugin in my blog.
Neat pic aye!
Catherine.. that wasn’t Akismet, that was me being slow to moderate. Your comment is up on Roamsters and thanks for the post idea. In a nutshell though, my answer would be The Rockies.
Carl… nice to see you pop by. I’ve been caught out by captcha’s in the past – writing a long comment, forgot to enter the sequence and lost the comment in the process. Don’t want to do that to my readers.
Thanks for the info Ros. I’ve been using another spam filter which is good. But the problem that has been happening most in the past few weeks is pingback spam. Does Askimet catch that? And if Akismet is so good, just curious why you moderate all comments?
I’m always popping by Ros. Maybe I should drop a comment often eh?