It’s been about a week and a half since I started this blog and I’m beginning to get spam comments as well as pingbacks from blogs that are just posting the first paragraph of my posts. Since I don’t want to have to moderate each individual comment, especially as the site grows, today I’m going to activate the Akismet spam filtering plugin that comes with WordPress. The Akisment plugin requires an API key from wordpress.com. As long as you’re not making more than $500/month from your personal blog, you can get an API key for free by signing up for a wordpress.com account.

1. Sign up at wordpress.com

If you don’t already have a wordpress.com account, you’ll need to go sign up. If you do, just skip to step two.

2. Retrieve your API key

Sign in to wordpress.com and click My Account>Edit Profile. Your API key will be listed at the top of the page. Copy the API key, you’ll need it in a minute.

3. Activate Akismet

Login to WordPress on your website (not wordpress.com) and click Plugins. Find Akisment and click Activate (it’s on the right). You will get a message at the top of the page saying “Akismet is almost ready. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work.” Go ahead and click enter your WordPress.com API key.

4. Enter your API key

Enter the API key you copied earlier into the textbox. I also chose to to check the “Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month” checkbox as well. I don’t see a point in letting them take up space in the database. Click Update Options and you should get a message saying “Your key has been verified. Happy blogging!”

So… Happy blogging!