Wordpress 2.0
I finally got around to upgrading to Wordpress 2.0, as suggested by my friend Chris. (Wordpress is the software that runs this blog). For the past few months, I’ve been having some ongoing problems with blog spam, and Wordpress 2.0 has some new features that seem to be doing extremely well in helping me combat this spam problem.
This upgraded version looks the same to anyone visiting robmaeder.com, but behind the scenes, there are some nice changes. The admin dashboard is revamped, giving it a much cooler look, and making it easier to use.
The best part about this new version is the integrated Akismet plugin which is a tool that checks blog comments and trackbacks and then filters out the spam from the legitimate entries. Since I host my blog on my own server and not on wordpress.com, I had to register with Wordpress to get an API key in order to use Akismet. This was a simple process which took about two minutes. Then I went in to the admin dashboard and activated the Akismet plugin with my API key. Everything else was handled automatically, and so far it’s been working very well. Before upgrading to 2.0, I would receive anywhere from 1 to 50 blog comment spams per day, and I would have to manually go in and delete them all. With Akismet, it automatically flags the spam comments without any human intervention. Comments are held for 15 days so they can be reviewed, and after that they are deleted automatically.
I’d highly recommend upgrading to Wordpress 2.0 if you are using a prior version. It’s been working well for me so far, so I have to give it two thumbs up.