Summary

Akismet is a spam protection plugin that comes pre-installed with Wordpress. It is used to protect against comment spam. Since IT Tuesday does not have commenting enabled, this plugin currently does not do anything. However, it is a staple of Wordpress and it is a good idea to leave it installed and upgraded, especially in the event that comments are turned on.

Use

Once setup, Akismet does not require anything to run. It operates through a Wordpress affiliated system and checks comments for spam, keeping statistics and alerting admins to what it catches as spam. To set it up initially, an account was created at wordpress.com in order to get the API key needed to run Akismet.

Upgrade

This plugin is updated frequently and thus requires frequent upgrades. However, it is a very simple upgrade with no customizations and very little risk of inadvertently harming anything. Simply deactivate the plugin, replace the files with the upgrade, and reactivate.