For years, the vast majority of Akismet releases have been centered around bug fixes and improving compatibility with various plugins. Version 5.0 was released today, following 4.2.5 earlier this month, with a new feature that should improve Askismet’s ability to detect spam comments. Akismet engineer Christopher Finke explained how the plugin will now analyze how…
Last week Disqus announced that the company has partnered with Akismet to combat comment spam. The blog comment hosting service processes 1.8 million comments per day and approximately 15,000 (0.8%) are spam. “It only takes one spam comment to create an eyesore in a lively discussion so, in a sense, stopping all these varying spam…
If you use Akismet to battle comment spam, make sure it’s running version 3.1.5 as it patches a critical security vulnerability. Due to the nature of the bug, the Akismet team pushed out auto updates to sites that can accept them. According to Sucuri, sites using Akismet 3.1.4 and lower and that have the Convert…
Akismet 3.1 is available for download and contains a bug fix that prevents it from inadvertently modifying a comment’s content during the spam filtering process. In addition to the bug fix, calls made to the Akismet API are now encrypted via SSL. While it may not seem like much on the surface, encrypting communications between…
In this episode of WordPress Weekly, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Leland Fiegel. Fiegel is the founder of WPChat.com, a site he relaunched into a forum dedicated to WordPress discussions. Fiegel shares the history of the domain and how he acquired it. He also explains why he chose Discourse to power the forum…
Akismet announced a redesign and complete update of the account dashboard today. Finding out what’s going on with your Akismet account is no longer a cryptic process thanks to the new additions to the dashboard. It now includes helpful stats and a full listing of all your active sites. Each active account links to a…
After using WordPress for seven years in a row, it’s hard to consider switching to another publishing platform. I have my gripes about WordPress and there are plenty of things that can improve the publishing process. However, after testing a few other open source alternatives, I was reminded of how many things I take for…
Oli Dale of WPLift, decided to leave comments open while having Akismet be the only anti-spam measure used. The result is 8,000 comments, most of which are spammy in nature. He sifted through 8,000 comments and published the results where he outlines the various techniques spammers are using to try to get past the filters.…
Akismet is one of those quiet utility plugins that works in the background of your WordPress site without a lot of fanfare. When it’s doing it’s job, your blog comments stay spam-free and you never think twice about it. Forgetting to activate Akismet on a new site will quickly remind you of just how much…
Akismet 3.0 is currently in development and the official release will likely coincide with WordPress 3.9 on April 16th. The upcoming 3.0 release represents a major rewrite of the plugin and the Akismet team is inviting everyone to help test the release candidate. This version will introduce a few new features and will remove much…
Akismet is celebrating a huge milestone today. According to its spam counter, it has now blocked over 100,000,000,000 spam messages. Not all of that spam has originated from WordPress powered websites. Thanks to a number of libraries and an API, Akismet can be used on different content management systems as well as services.
Here’s a fairly common scenario for WordPress users and developers. When setting up a self-hosted site for someone else, you’re usually working alone, without your client by your side. Perhaps you’re building a site for your mother or a non-profit or someone who is not technically inclined. You quickly install WordPress, apply your chosen theme…
If we were playing a game of Family Feud and they asked the question, What word comes to mind when you hear about WordPress and Spam? I bet Akismet would be the top answer. However, Akismet is not for everyone. There are alternatives and today, I’m happy to report that one of those alternatives has…
Everyone has an opinion as to what WordPress needs and Dev4Press recently shared theirs on what they believe WordPress needs with regards to features. Any time I read a post like this, it’s as if I can hear the core team in my head yelling out “patches welcome“. But you know, just because you dedicate…
Akismet has started an experimental partner program. Based on the information presented, it looks like this is aimed more at consultants who deal with clients and instead of possibly using their own Akismet API key, they’ll now be able to refer them to Akismet via a special link which indicates the three plans that users…