Wordpress Mystery Solved With The Will Of God

Some time ago, those of us who were using Wordpress.com noticed this strange API key in our Admin. Sure enough Matt just happened to baffle a lot of us into wondering what in the name of God was the API key there for. Well…now we have the answer.

Enter Akismet.

Akismet is Matt's and his merry band's brainchild into stopping spam trackback and comments once and for all. The thing about this is that it's not a system in which you install on your blog and uses your system resources, it's an entire central server dedicated to ridding your own blog of spam. The only thing you need to install on your Wordpress blog is a plugin which allows you to interface with the Akismet server. That's it. That's all you need to do.

Except for one little thing…Akismet is available to Wordpress users ONLY if you have a Wordpress.com account…which is where the API keys come in. You need your personal API key given in your Wordpress.com Admin to activate and run Akismet on your blog.

So far…I've got no problems with it, though there is a slight amusement to Akismet's namesake. Here is the reason why:

Kismet:
n : (Islam) the will of Allah

Of course maybe Matt wasn't going for the will of God maybe it could have been something far more sexy to him, maybe it was for a girl or something…after all it does sound like "A Kiss Matt". Whatever his reasons were for the name…it's still a span filter system worth trying out all the same.

1 Trackback and Pingbacks: »

Footsteps in the Mirror » Wordpress.com Now Open
[...] Wordpress 2.0 happens to be bundled up with the Akismet Centralised Spam Filter plugin which needs a Wordpress API…which currently can only be obtained via a Wordpress.com account. [...]

4 People Said A Couple Of Things: »

Dee wrote from on October 26, 2005 at 19:46 and said:

Can Akismet be used in the other Wordpress?

Between Akismet and Bad Behavior, which one is recommendable? Either one or both?

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Kamigoroshi wrote from on October 26, 2005 at 20:06 and said:

What other Wordpress? It’s meant to be used with Wordpress blogs. Wordpress.com blogs are already protected anyway.

I’m using both, but I removed my Spam Karma 2 plugin to see how well it works.

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IO ERROR wrote from on October 26, 2005 at 23:58 and said:

Spam Karma 2, unfortunately, is redundant now. Then again, maybe that’s fortunate; I understand dr Dave is a bit burned out right now. Bad Behavior, however, remains relevant as ever.

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Kamigoroshi wrote from on October 27, 2005 at 00:41 and said:

Yeah considering that Akismet seems to use the same good/bad feature as SK2. I thought that Dr Dave’s working on SK2.1. Won’t that be bad since Akismet’s out. Unless…of course since right now you need the Wordpress API to activate the plugin. Maybe SK2 might still be good after all for people who don’t need a Wordpress.com blog.

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