Two plugins pre-install with every WordPress installation. One is Hello Dolly and second is Akismet. This is about Akismet plugin, very important one for all WordPress blogger.

What is Akismet?

Akismet is WordPress plugin from the developer of WordPress blog, this is comment spam filtering service. There are many people using same messages for different blogs only to receiving back links to their sites. Comments are irrelevant and means nothing with blog posts, that’s why we have Akismet to stop them.

When you receive a comment and akismet consider it as spam it sends to spam folder and you can see in admin dashboard. See below image, hit the link and you will see all spam comments marked.

If comments from same user is marked spam in number of websites Akismet learn to mark all comments by same user as spam.

This is not to stop receiving spam comments but to mark all known spammers. By activating this you get notification about already marked comments, so your comment boxes are spam free. You have to go and delete it manually. There are computer programs and even human spammers, you can stop bots by putting a simple test which only human can solve. How you can stop bots.

How to set Akismet?

You need to add API key to activate and start using Akismet plugin. After hitting activate link you will see Activate your Akismet account button as in the below image.

Next you have to enter API in the text box. If you have API key, enter in the box and click Use this key or just hit above button Get your API key.

This will take you Akismet plans and price page. Choose as you need, Akismet is free for personal website with 5000 monthly checks. For business website, there are different plans.

Fill out the form and click continue. You will receive API key via e-mail. Just copy and paste this to start using, all your spam comments will be kept in to spam folder. You can see all detected spam comments in admin dashboard and take further action.