Akismet

The Akismet plugin was one of WordPress' first ever plugins, developed by WordPress' own creator with the sole intent of detecting spam.

The plugin now works via the Akismet Web service, a series of servers that read comments submitted via WordPress blogs and detect if it's spam or user generated.

What's marked as spam is then sent to the blog's Comments administration page, where the admin can review them individually and delete them from the site.

Installation:

Unpack and upload it to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.

What is new in this release:

• Improvements to the "Remove comment author URL" JavaScript.
• Include the pingback pre-check from the 2.6 branch.

What is new in version 3.1.1:

• Improvements to the "Remove comment author URL" JavaScript.
• Include the pingback pre-check from the 2.6 branch.

What is new in version 3.0.4:

• Fix to make .htaccess compatible with Apache 2.4.
• Fix to allow removal of https author URLs.
• Fix to avoid stripping part of the author URL when removing and re-adding.
• Removed the "Check for Spam" button from the "Trash" and "Approved" queues, where it would have no effect.

What is new in version 3.0.2:

• Performance improvements.
• Fixed a bug that could truncate the comment data being sent to Akismet for checking.

What is new in version 3.0.1:

• Removed dependency on PHP's fsockopen function
• Fix spam/ham reports to work when reported outside of the WP dashboard, e.g., from Notifications or the WP app
• Remove jQuery dependency for comment form JavaScript
• Remove unnecessary data from some Akismet comment meta

What is new in version 3.0.0:

• Move Akismet to Settings menu
• Drop Akismet Stats menu
• Add stats snapshot to Akismet settings
• Add Akismet subscription details and status to Akismet settings
• Add contextual help for each page
• Improve Akismet setup to use Jetpack to automate plugin setup
• Fix Update Check for Spam to use ajax to avoid page timing out
• Fix Akismet settings page to be responsive
• Drop legacy code
• Tidy up CSS and JavaScript

What is new in version 2.6.0:

• Optimize javascript and add localization support
• Fix bug in link to spam comments from right now dashboard widget
• Fix bug with deleting old comments to avoid timeouts dealing with large volumes of comments
• Include X-Pingback-Forwarded-For header in outbound WordPress pingback verifications
• Add pre-check for pingbacks, to stop spam before an outbound verification request is made

What is new in version 2.5.8:

• Simplify the activation process for new users.
• Remove the reporter_ip parameter.

What is new in version 2.5.6:

• Prevent retry scheduling problems on sites where wp_cron is misbehaving
• Preload mshot previews
• Modernize the widget code
• Fix a bug where comments were not held for moderation during an error condition
• Improve the UX and display when comments are temporarily held due to an error
• Make the Check For Spam button force a retry when comments are held due to an error
• Handle errors caused by an invalid key
• Don't retry comments that are too old

What is new in version 2.5.5:

• Added nonce check for comment author URL remove action.
• Fixed the settings link.

What is new in version 2.5.4:

• Added author URL quick removal functionality
• Added mShot preview on Author URL hover
• Added empty index.php to prevent directory listing
• Move wp-admin menu items under Jetpack, if it is installed
• Limit Akismet CSS and Javascript loading in wp-admin to just the pages that need it
• Purge old Akismet comment meta data, default of 15 days

Requirements:

• WordPress 3 or higher
• Akismet API key