Dealing with comment spam

Some blogs on nerdylorrin.net have unfortunately been getting a bunch of comment spam. If you’re getting spammed, please take the following steps:

1. Go to the WordPress.com signup page.
1. Pick a username. Enter your email address. Select “just a username, please.”
2. Click “Next.”
2. Wait for the activation email. Click the link in it. (This will take to a page with your new WordPress.com password. You actually won’t need this password for these steps, but it might be good to write it down anyway.)
3. Wait for another email to arrive. This will contain an API key.
4. On your blog’s Site Admin, go to “Plugins.”
5. Activate the Akismet plugin.
6. A message will flash in red at the top. Click the link to “enter your WordPress.com API key”
7. Enter the API key from step 3. Click “Update API Key.”

That’s it! Akismet checks comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. This approach seems to require the least work for bloggers and commenters alike. If it’s not effective I’ll look into other options.

Click for more information on WordPress.com API Keys.

FYI, Akismet’s privacy policy is “we don’t save comments that get submitted to our Akismet comment spam blocking service unless they were marked as false positives; in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.”