A Captcha

Since computers can’t read these images effectively, they are used as verification of a person posting a comment or filling out a form is a real person. If the captcha isn’t correct, the comment isn’t made.

Pica Design would be more than happy to place a captcha system on your website. While it takes time to be filled out, it ensures that your website isn’t overrun with spam.

Pica Design will set up your Akismet account when we set up your blog, and maintaining it is easy. To access the spam queue, click ‘Comments’ on the left menu, then ‘Spam’ under ‘Edit Comments.’ This takes you to your spam queue. Here you can see comments which Akismet has tagged as spam.

Spam Queue

Akismet usually does a fantastic job detecting what is and what isn’t spam. However, it isn’t infallible, and every so often you should check the queue to see if Akismet tagged a legitimate comment as spam by mistake. If it is, click the check box on the left of the comment, and then under ‘Bulk Actions,’ click ‘Approve.’

To see an overview of how Akismet is dealing with your comments, click ‘Akismet Stats’ under ‘Dashboard.’ Here are a number of charts showing how many spam comments have been caught, how many legitimate comments have passed through Akismet’s filter, and other options.

Akismet Stats

And that’s all there is to Akismet. Although it may seem simple, don’t be deceived. It uses a powerful system to detect and prevent spam, and I can attest myself that it works beautifully.