WordPress Step by Step Tutorial Part 6 - Managing Spam.
Short discussion here. We are going to take steps to reduce comment spam that you might receive. The main way we are going to do this is activate a plug-in that comes with WordPress by default called Akismet. Akismet will handle the majority of spam that most blogs will receive. If you find with your blog it’s not stopping enough spam then you can fortify it with other plugins. I won’t get into any more specifics at this point about which other plugins you might add because I am not adding any at this point, and the landscape about which solution might be best could change.
To use Akismet you activate it via Plugins > Installed as you would any other plug-in, but before it starts working you have to do another step, unique for this plug-in. You have to get a WordPress.com API key. This is really a unique identifier that you get when you register for a WordPress.com account. Having a wordpress.com account is useful in that, well, you get this key which will make Akismet work, but also so you can post on the forums, get on their mailing list about new releases and issues, etc.
Just go to http://wordpress.com/signup/ and fill out the form. Once you have done this you should get an email with an activation link. Just click that and then login with the username and password you have setup. Once you are logged in, click on the dashboard link and then profile. At the top of the profile page is your API key. Copy that and go back to your own blog admin section and back to Plugins > Installed. At the top of that page will be a link enter your API key. click on that and you will be brought to this page.
Enter your key and check the box to automatically discard old spam comments and you are good to go.
Remember, even if comments do get through your Akismet or any other spam tools you have setup, you can deal with it manually. We’ll cover managing comments next session.
test
testing a comment as me.