Guide To Use Akismet On WordPress

These days, the biggest problem on the Internet is Spam. Website owners and Internet marketing experts face it almost on a daily basis. Actually, it is an unsolicited email/request sent by human/automated spammers (to the potential customers) with a clear intention to introduce and sell products/services.

Different spamming issues (such as malicious traffic, spam comments, redirection to harmful links, etc,) negatively affect the performance of your site, ruin your precious resources, damage your reputation and drive visitors away from your website.

If you tend to combat spam manually, it will cause irritation and disappointment. Even WorPress websites are not protected from spamming. Dexterous spammers can flood your site with spam in a number of ways. So, how can you curb this problem without wasting your resources? The answer is- Akismet Plugin.

Akismet is a famous WordPress plugin, used for fighting different types of spamming issues on WordPress websites. It remains available in the official WordPress installation by default and helps WordPress website owners to clear spam off from their sites.

When your site gets huge traffic, a heavy dose of spam comments can affect its performance. When you use this plugin, it automatically traces numerous spam comments on your site within a few minutes and deletes them ultimately.

The main benefit of using this plugin is that it saves your previous time and energy. It also helps you to maintain your site’s decent ranking in search engine results (by erasing spam comments). As a result, readers find only the right stuff while visiting your site.

Process to add Akismet to your WordPress website

1. Install And Activate The Plugin

As the plugin is already made available in new WordPress installations. So, just go to your website dashboard>plugins and look for Akismet. Once your find it, click on the activate button.As soon as you activate the button, the plugin adds Akismet configuration in the plugins section. When you click on the Akismet Configuration, you will reach Akismet Configuration screen. Here, you will be asked to insert the Akismet API Key. Please hold here for a while and open another window on your computer/laptop browser to grab an API key for Akismet.

2. Get An API Key For Akismet

For this, you need to visit the website of Akismet and get a WordPress Key Button. When you click on the button, you will be redirected to plans and pricing page. You can choose any option as per your needs and budget.After choosing a plan, you need to register with WordPress.com and create a free WordPress.com account. As soon as you create and confirm your WordPress account, you get the API key on your specified Email Id and profile page.Precaution- Don’t be careless about the API key you get. It’s like a password that you should protect at all costs. So, you must not share it with anyone and save it at some safe places (such as Dropbox, pen-drive, etc,) for future use. Always remember that you can use a single WordPress.com API to install and activate this plugin on multiple WordPress websites.

3. Use The API Key In Akismet Configuration

As soon as you get the API key, rush to your site’s dash board> enter your WordPress.com API link page> Akismet configuration page, insert your API key in the box and click on the update option. Apart from this, on the same page, you resort to the option “ automatically discard spam comments older than 1 month”.

It will help you to reduce the volume of spam comments on your site’s older post and save your resources.

Tips For Using Akismet Properly

When you activate this plugin and log into your site, under the Akismet status, spam comments detected by the plugin start getting displayed. Furthermore, all possible spam comments as well are also marked and listed.

Always keep in mind that if a comment is labeled as spam by the plugin, the commenter can’t view that “comment moderation message” against it. It sometimes makes your genuine visitors and subscribers unhappy. As a result, they may stop visiting your site or participating in blog comments.

Therefore, It is suggested that you must check the marked comments carefully so that you may not erase the legitimate comments coming from visitors and subscribers.

If you are willing to display the total number of spam comments caught by the plugin on your WordPress site, you should use the widget. For this, you need to go to site’s dashboard>Appearance>Widgets drag and drop Akismet Widget to your sidebar and save the settings.So, what is the overall performance of this plugin on different parameters?

• Spam fighting – 4 out of 5 stars
• Ease of Use- 4 out of 5 stars
• Pricing- 4 out of 5 and
• Features- 4 out of 5 stars

Final Words

Spamming is an irritating problem which is extremely prevalent on the Internet. Akismet can be your true companion if you are looking for a right tool to erase the huge gathering of spamming on your WordPress site. Don’t expect a 100% solution of this chronic issue by using this plugin.