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.