What is Akismet Plugin & How to Setup Akismet for WordPress

What is Akismet?

If you installed WordPress, then you might notice that there are two plugins already installed in plugin section and Akismet is one of them. After activating, you need an API key to setup Akismet. Not to mention Akismet is one of the most active installed (1+ million active installs) & highest rated WordPress plugin.

The name Akismet comes from Automattic and Kismet. Auttomatic is the company behind Akismet, and it was founded by the WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.

Akismet is a comment spam filtering plugin that means it filters your website’s comments and let you know which comments are marked as spam. Akismet uses their specific algorithm to check every comment. For example, when a number of websites start reporting similar looking content as spam, then Akismet will learn to identify that kind of content as SPAM in the future. As of June 14, 2013, Akismet has caught more than 83 Billion spam comments. 

Why You Should Start Using Akismet Right Now

We all hate SPAM. It’s annoying. It hurts your site’s credibility and SEO. As your site starts getting traffic, there is 100% chance that you will get a lot of spam comments. Only few comments are legit and 85-90% comments are SPAM. It is really hardy and time spending work to separate which one is spam or which one is Legit. Using Akismet you don’t need to do this anymore, it takes care all of your incoming comments. This way Akismet saves your time, so you can focus on your work. In this article I am happy to share with you about How to Setup Akismet Plugin Step by Step for Your WordPress Site.

How to Setup Akismet Plugin for WordPress

1. The first step is to activate Akismet plugin from your WordPress Admin Dashboard.After activating this plugin, click on Akismet settings. Then you will be asked to enter Akismet API key. If you already have API key, then simply use that key. If you don’t have API key, then click on “Get Your API Key”. 

Get an Akismet API Key

To setup Akismet, you must need an API key. Click on “Get an Akismet API Key” button. It will take you to Sign up page. If you already have a WordPress.com account, then just click on I already have a WordPress.com account. If you don’t have WordPress.com account, then create a new account. It takes less than 1 minute. You have to provide your E-mail, desired username and password. After completing sign up, it will redirect you to pricing page. Before selecting plans, take a look the key features of Akismet.

Akismet Plans

Akismet is the industry-leading spam defence service for WordPress, currently protecting more than 9 million sites. 

• Basic: This basic plan is free and it is suitable for personal sites and blogs. With this plan you will get only spam protection.
• Plus: With this plan, you will get fully spam protection, advanced stats, priority support and supports commercial sites. It costs $5/month per site and it is suitable for professional or commercial sites and blogs.
• Premium: This is the complete security solution that protects you from more than just spam. This plan includes all plans(basic+premium). It suits for big website and it does malware scanning of your website.

If you have personal site or blog, then choose the “Basic” plan and continue.

After that, you will be asked to make a payment for that subscription. Don’t panic. There is a drag bar. Just change the amount to $0. After this you can see only two option: First name & Last name.

Get Your Akismet API Key

This step is one of the most important steps, so do it carefully. In this account overview page, you will get your Akismet API key. To get the key, click on the Eye button and copy the code.

Here you can add your website URL to view your website stats anytime. You can also see summery how many comments were marked as spam in months. If you want more features, then you can active subscriptions.

After you copy the code, go to your WordPress dashboard. There you go to Akismet settings page, and you will see an option like this Manually enter an API key. Paste the code and Click on use this code. The API is very secret, so don’t share it with anyone. In case if you lost your key, then you can get the key by logging in Akismet. Now you are all set and you successfully setup Akismet.

Preferred Akismet Settings

After you setup Akismet by using API key, then comes the settings page. Basically, some users keep it default. But you can modify some options. Here you can check comments box to see the number of approved comments beside each comment author. That’s all. Now your website is protected by Akismet.