How To Block SPAM On Your WordPress Site

Today we’re going to address the thing that is universally hated: SPAM! They are everywhere on the internet, and as your website traffic is growing, trust me you’re going to have them whether in the comments section or through your contact form. Blocking them is so crucial to keep your content relevant and professional looking. So how do you do that?

There are lots of plugins and anti-spam solutions are available out there but today I’m going to elaborate on how to protect your site from spam using Akismet, which is created by WordPress’s very own founder. It is quite a robust tool as it is functional with many different kinds of forms and comment systems that you might have on your site.

You can follow these easy steps to get started:

1. Search for the plugin and install it.
2. Activate it. On the plugins page, you will see a banner at the top so just click on the “Activate Your Akismet Account” to proceed. Another way to activate aside from clicking the button on this page is to access Jetpack on the left sidebar and then click on Akismet.
3. Get your API key which kind of verifies your use of the plugin. Click on the button “Get an Akismet API Key”
4. Choose your plan. There is the basic plan for just basic spam protection, or the plus plan, which also offers support for commercial sites, advanced stats, and priority support. As your site grows bigger and bigger, you might want to consider the plus plan, but as we’re just starting out or trying it out, go ahead and click on the basic plan which you can get for free. 
5. To continue, on the next page you can just slide left on the pricing, or if you want to do the nice thing and pay for the basic version as a thank you to the creators, you can do that as well. Then click on continue.
6. You’re getting your API key, and it will also confirm to you the site you want to activate Akismet with. You can choose to activate the site or you can also take the API key and enter it through WordPress. This links through your WordPress account which was created along with the activation of Jetpack in the previous lesson.
7. Your Akismet is activated, you can see the API keyed in, you’re already protected. Awesome!

Once it has been activated, you can configure the strictness. You can either get the spam comments discarded automatically so you don’t even know about it then poof! It’s gone. Or, you can opt for the spam to be put in the spam folder so you can review it later. There are cases when some comments may be wrongly considered as spam so you might want to review them first. But if your site is already so big you’re getting tons of spam daily, you might not have the time to review everything so you might want to pick the first option. After you choose how the spam is going to be treated, go ahead and click on Save Changes.

Your site is now spam-protected, so congratulations are in order!

Overtime if you want to check out how the spam protection has been performing, you can check out the stats on your WordPress dashboard under site stats. You will be able to see the number of spam comments blocked by Akismet. And you can always customize your dashboard. For example, you can drag the stats to the top so it becomes the first thing you see or you can also click on the screen options at the top if you want to show or hide any of the components.

To wrap up you have now learned how to protect your site from spam. Keep on exploring to learn more about managing your WordPress website!

Review

• How do you activate your Akismet spam protection?
• What are the available strictness options for Akismet spam protection?
• How can you find the stats of blocked comments on WordPress?