How to Stop WordPress Blog Comment Spam

If you have started a new blog or had one running for some
time, you may have noticed you’re receiving comment spam.
Before I put a stop to it, I was getting medical product
and gambling offers which have absolutely no relevance to
my web design blog.

Spammers notice new blogs via back links to wordpress.org
and once you’re noticed they will always be able to spam
you. You may soon end up with 100s of spam comments. This
not only clutters up your blog but will also eat up your
hosting space and bandwidth and therefore cost you more
money to run your blog.

How to prevent blog comment spam

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web
service to see if they look like spam.

1. Download the Akismet plug-in.
Activate the Askimet plug-in that automatically comes with Word Press 2.02

2. You need a WordPress API key to use this service.
To get this you need to sign up for a Word Press account

3. You will receive an email with login
information necessary to create your new blog and the API key
(no need to use the account after that). If you already have a
WordPress.com account, your API key is listed on your profile page,
which you can get to by clicking the “My Account” link in the top
right when you’re logged in.

4. Copy the API numbers and insert it into your site when prompted after activating your Akismet plug-in.

5. You can review the spam Akismet catches under “Manage.” When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case you want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it.

6. Remove the wordpress.org link. Because spammers notice new blogs via back links to wordpress.org you may want to remove this link replace it with something else ie copyright information.

To do this, remove this line of code in the footer.php file:


<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> is proudly powered by
<a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>


and replacing it with your own copyright notice…if you wish.
(this reminds visitors that everything you write on your blog is copyright protected). i.e.


© 2006 <a href="http://www.drostdesigns.com/">DrostDesigns.com
</a>  All Rights Reserveda>

7. Now you don’t have to worry about receiving
blog comment spam anymore. If you are worried about the Akismet
plug-in deleting comments you may want to keep, the comments will
remain in their database for 15 days before they are deleted automatically.