Refer to this help article.
What is Akismet and how will Akismet help me with SPAM protection?
Akismet is the defacto SPAM protection solution for comments and forum posts used by most publishing platform. Akismet detects SPAM automatically based on the content of the message and on its headers.
This way you will enable your visitors to comment on your blogs, review pages and forums without having to enter any CAPTCHA security form.
How do I enable Akismet on my website?
Comments: Whether you want Akismet enabled on comments for blogs, web pages, web apps, FAQs, products etc, you can enable it from Modules > Comments >Actions > Manage New Comment Rules.
Forums: You can enable automatic spam detection on forums by selecting Modules > Forums, and then clicking Manage Spam. From here, click Enable next to Automatic spam detection.
What type of comments can be moderated with Akismet?
You can moderate comments related to News, Blogs, Catalogs, FAQs, Products, Web Apps, Web Pages. For Forums, Akismet will have a separate set-up.
Can I have both manual moderation and Akismet enabled?
Yes you can. All these messages will be scanned and categorized by Akismet, but you can manually decide if they are displayed on your website.
What are the states of the comments after I enable Akismet?
Every comment will have three states: Pending, Approved and Spam.
If only Akismet is enabled:
- The comment will automatically enter in the “Pending” mode before Akismet scans it.
- After Akismet has scaned the message, it will enter automatically “Spam” or “Approved”.
If Akismet is enabled together with manual moderation:
- The comment will enter in “Pending” state.
- Akismet will scan the comment and:
- If it decides that it is Spam, the comment will enter in “Spam” state
- If it decides that it is NOT Spam, the comment will stay in “Pending” mode until you decide if you want it published or not.
What happens to the actual settings related to SPAM on my website?
Your actual settings will stay the same. In order to change these settings and enable Akismet, you will have to go to:
Modules > Comments >Actions > Manage New Comment Rules and enable “Automatic SPAM detection”.
or
Modules > Forums > Manage Spam and enable "Automatic spam detection".
After enabling Akismet on my site, I get a lot of comments incorrectly marked as spam. Why is that?
Since not all sites are equal, one comment might be considered spam for a site, and not for another one. To cope with this, the automatic spam detection engine that we're using is learning from your actions. When it marks a comment as spam and then you approve it manually, the engine will learn that this is actually not spam and next time it would behave differently. To make sure that the spam detection filter is optimized for your site, please train it by checking your site's comments and correcting any false positives and negatives.
Note: You can see your comments by going to Modules > Comments in the admin console of your site.
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