After declaring to the world that they’ve killed over 20 billion spam comments, Akismet (an anti-spam service for WordPress) has announced a new version of their plugin which will make it easier for bloggers to fight the good fight against spam.
While the service is still free for WordPress users worldwide, Akismet’s latest promo (which highlights their update) seems to cater more towards professional bloggers and business users.
According to Akismet, bloggers will need to be running WordPress 3.0 or higher in order to utilize the plugin. Unfortunately upon upgrading the plugin I did discover a “small” bug (my flash dashboard disappeared), although Akismet seems to be aware of the issue and is promising a fix in the future.
Extra features like comment history should make it easier for bloggers to distinguish loyal readers from “hit and run” spammers who might have slipped past Akismet’s defenses.
Interestingly Akismet seems to be placing a greater emphasis on premium accounts (via their signup page), which start at $5/month for a professional blogger and $50/month for those with multiple blogs boasting ads (note: Akismet considers bloggers “professional” if they have ads upon their site).
Although Akismet is not the only anti-spam service available to WordPress fans (as third party plugins like WP Spam Free are strong alternatives), it’s one of the few services that is able to hold its own against human spammers, making the service an invaluable tool for bloggers everywhere.
