Akismet Celebrates Huge Spam Blocking Milestone

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.

Installing Akismet Helpers

While Akismet has saved me a ton of time, ever since I added two plugins to this website to go in front of Akismet, it’s been much more effective. I’ve installed Cookies for comments and Simple Trackback Validation. The results speak for themselves. But don’t take my word for it. Justin Tadlock wrote about his experience using these two plugins and he considered Cookies for comments one of his top 5. Another plugin worthy of trying is WP-Hashcash. While you may notice the two-year update notice on the WP-Hashcash and Simple Trackback Validation plugin pages, I can assure you that both work with WordPress 3.7.

Share How Much Spam Akismet Has Blocked

If you use the Jetpack plugin by Automattic, you’ll be able to use the Akismet widget. Browse to Appearance – Widgets and locate the Akismet Widget under the available widgets area. There are no options since the only thing it does is show people visiting your site how much spam has been blocked. While green is the color of Akismet, it doesn’t look great on every website. Also, since there is no padding underneath the spam count, it gives the appearance that the widget is broken.

Don’t mind the number because it’s wrong. Since the launch of WPTavern, the counter has been reset a few times. With WordPress powering 20% of the web and multiple services able to tie into Akismet, it shouldn’t take nearly as long to reach 200,000,000,000. I just hope this site doesn’t take the brunt of that number!