How to protect your WordPress site from spamming

At its core, Akismet is a tool that helps you filter unsolicited comments and spam from contact form messages. You can almost think of it as the tools you use to filter spam from your email inbox, but in this case, it does the same for your WordPress sites. However, in order to truly understand what Akismet is, we need to illustrate how it works.

How Akismet works

Akismet (Automatic Kismet) is a way to deal with spam in an aggregate crowdsourced process. Every time a person posts a comment or fills out a form on a website with Akismet installed, the system compares it with a database of unsolicited comments. If it’s spam, the comment or form filler is deleted. Whenever someone marks a comment or form fill as spam, it is added to the database. Theoretically, this should strengthen the plugin over time.

Free spam plugin

Lucky for you, Akismet is very easy to set up and use. Akismet is offered using a free pricing model, so the plugin itself is free to download and with the option to upgrade to a premium plan for more features. In any case, in order to get started, you must first install the plugin.

After logging in to the WordPress administration, you can find the plugin in the category »Plugins« and »Plugin Installation« under the name »Akismet Spam Protection«.