The Akismet Configuration feature allows you to automatically discard spam comments that come in on posts that are more than a month old.

Most “false positive” comments, those valid comments that Akisment erroneously marks as spam, occur on new posts.

Typically, older comments are targeted by spam agents as these posts “fall off your radar” after awhile – you’re just not as likely to return to posts that are six months old as the topic becomes exhausted.  When spam agents attack these areas, you will receive notification of this repeatedly within your spam queue, which can become an issue for large blogsites.

When this Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month option is enabled, these notifications will not appear in your queue – Akismet will just automatically delete the spam and not tell you about it.

Configure Akismet

To configure Akismet, do the following:

  • From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins > Akismet Configuration.
  • Select the Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month checkbox.
  • Click the Update Options button.

There are four different Plugins that, by default, come with the blogs@oregonstate.edu WordPress installation:

  • Popularity Contest: enables ranking of your posts by popularity, using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity
  • Sociable: automatically adds links on your posts, pages, and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites
  • WP-Polls: Adds an AJAX polling system to your blog.
  • WP-PostRatings: adds an AJAX rating system for your blog’s post/page

Activate a Plugin

To activate a Plugin, do the following:

  • From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins. This will automatically open up a list of all installed Plugins.
  • Select the desired Plugin by clicking on its corresponding Activate link.
  • The background on the newly activated Plugin will change to white
  • Depending on the Plugin, a Settings link may also be made available.  Some Plugins may require configuration.  If a Settings link is available, click on it to go into the Settings and make any changes you desire.

Deactivate a Plugin

  • From within your Dashboard, click on Plugins to open your list.
  • Locate the Plugin to be deactivated and click on its corresponding Deactivate link.
  • The background on the newly deactivated Plugin will change to grey

Plugins are add-on pieces of software which expand the functionality of WordPress.

Plugins differ from Widgets in the fact that the code used is typically more complicated.  Some Plugins actually create Widgets.  Other Plugins may simply perform tasks in the background of your blogsite and show no real visible effects on the screen.