Version 2.5.0 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress 3 is now available. Check the Plugins tab of your wp-admin dashboard for instructions on how to update automatically, or visit the plugin page for details.
This version requires WordPress 3.0 or higher.
This is the first Akismet release in a long time that includes visible new features (in addition to the usual behind-the-scenes magic of course). You can see them here in our short video:
Major changes since Akismet 2.4 include:
- A comment status history, so you can easily see which comments were caught or cleared by Akismet, and which were spammed or unspammed by a moderator
- Links are highlighted in the comment body, to reveal hidden or misleading links
- If your web host is unable to reach Akismet’s servers, the plugin will automatically retry
- Moderators can see the number of approved comments for each user
- Spam and Unspam reports now include more information, to help improve accuracy
For those of you already using Akismet on your WordPress 3.0 blog, upgrading is quick and easy thanks to the plugin updater. If you haven’t yet tried Akismet, visit the Plugins tab to enable it, and get your API key here – it’s free for personal use.
If you’re still using WordPress 2.9 or earlier, please stick with Akismet 2.4, our legacy branch for old WordPress versions. Or upgrade to the soon-to-be-released WordPress 3.1, which has Akismet 2.5 built in.
Akismet 
Nice! I like this version.
But i unable to see flash data on Akismet Stats page. 😦
Jyri, we’ll be replacing the Flash graphs with something better soon.
I updated to 2.5 earlier today. The ‘Auto-delete spam submitted on posts more than a month old.’ no longer works in WordPress 3.0.1. I have tried unchecking the relevant box, save options, re-checking the box, save options, but it makes no difference.
Also, I am unable to display any Akismet stats. On each occasion that I’ve tried, the page hangs with 5 items remaining and the message ‘waiting for akismet.com/web/1.0/user-stats.php?blog=http…….’.
Just updated this morning. Looks like the feature to automatically delete spam comments made on posts older than one month is broken. At least it is broken for me.
We’ve tracked down that issue and will have a fix in 2.5.1.
The Akismet update has also significantly increased the font size for the author’s name in the comments page which is very distracting.
The author’s name, email address and IP address are now offset to the right which causes some names and most email addresses to wrap over on to two lines whereas previously only a few email addresses did this. This makes reading names and, particularly, email addresses much more difficult.
Is it possible for me to revert to v2.4 until these problems are resolved or will the modifications to the database created by v2.5 prevent this?
Finally, would it be possible in the next version of Akismet to include the option of changing the ‘auto-delete spam’ from ‘posts more than a month old’ to ‘posts more than a week old’ as this would greatly reduce the number of comments I have to plough through each morning to check that a valid comment hasn’t been intercepted by mistake.
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the suggestions. The larger font size for the author’s name is intentional, to help draw suspicious names to the attention of the moderators. It shouldn’t be offset to the right though – do you mind sending a screenshot and browser info to support at akismet.com?
You should be able to safely revert to 2.4. Version 2.5 doesn’t alter the database schema; all the extra info is stored in the comment_meta table (which is why WordPress 3.0 is required).
The “auto delete” suggestion is a tricky one, but we’ll certainly consider your suggestion. Some users misunderstand the purpose of that setting, so we’re wary of confusing them further (they read it as “spam more than a month old” instead of “posts more than a month old”).
Nice video. I like the jazz tunes. And thanks for the info concerning the flash graphics.
Are the number of approved comments and highlighted links premium features or are those available for free?
And will you have a chart/graph highlighting the benefits of pro over free? Pretty please!! 🙂
All of the features listed there are available for free, including the approved comment counter and link highlighting.
A table showing the difference is a good idea. Currently the only additional features of paid accounts are premium support and high availability. We plan to introduce some new features for our pro customers soon. (But we certainly won’t remove any from free users!)
Alex
Thanks. I will send screenshots tomorrow morning. However, you haven’t addressed my original comments (still awaiting moderation) which was more pressing. The problem that v2.5 does not auto-delete spam comments on posts that are over one month old and that the stats do not display.
I’m not too concerned about the latter at the moment but the former is a serious problem if I want to check that genuine comments have not been incorrectly intercepted since my spam folder is now receiving 100+ comments per hour instead of the 20+ when the auto-delete was working.
We’ve tracked down the broken auto-delete option, that will be fixed as part of 2.5.1. The stats issue has also been figured out and we should have a fix soon.
I hope that the new flash will come soon. It’s a bit disappointing seeing so much free space without these statistics. Also the statistics of the months “Spam posts #” seems not to be updating – or did you increase the time between those updates?
Anyway, good job!
We’ve tracked down what happened with the charts and should have a fix soon.
Akismet just got much better. Just updated to newest version and I am beyond pleased.
Thanks guys,
Emil
Hi,
I upgraded to Akismet 2.5.0 yesterday for WordPress (I have the latest version of WordPress) and I’m getting significantly more spam. The site used to have dozens of spam caught in the spam filter daily and today it had over 500. Is the latest version just catching more spam?
Hi Allison,
Glad to hear they’re all being caught! This is most likely coincidence: there is a high level of spam activity right now, but it’s not related to the Akismet 2.5 release.
Ever since I upgraded to 2.5.0 (I’m running WordPress 3.0.2), I’ve been getting a ton of e-mail notifications of spam comments on older posts, even though I have “auto delete spam comments on posts more than a month old” checked. Why is this happening, and how can I stop it?
Thank you!
This is now a known issue for 2.5.0. We have a fix that will be part of 2.5.1.
Sadly on my blog spam on posts older than a month is no longer being deleted automatically, even though the option “Auto-delete spam submitted on posts more than a month old” is checked (since upgrading to 2.5). 😦
We’ve had multiple reports of this and it is now a known issue. We will have it fixed in 2.5.1.
Alex: In the older version, my spam queue usually remained empty except for the occasional spam comment and false positive because I had the “Auto-delete spam submitted on posts more than a month old” checked. In this new version, I still have that checked, yet it’s displaying spam comments on posts older than a month. I’m running version 3.0. Any tips? Thanks.
We’ve been able to reproduce this problem and will have it fixed in 2.5.1.
I upgraded to the new version and now spam on posts more than a month old are not being automatically deleted anymore. The option is checked, and I’ve unchecked it, saved it, then re-checked it, and it still doesn’t work. Any ideas?
Yes, we’ve confirmed this as a bug in 2.5.0. Look for a fix in 2.5.1 soon.
The contact form on my blog was working fine a few days ago. However, when I tested it again this morning the email enquiry was not sent and an error message came up on the blog contact form page: Fatal error: Call to undefined function akismet_http_post() in /usr/home/brookl/www/htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/enhanced-wordpress-contactform/wp-contactform.php on line 125.
The only thing I’ve changed recently that might have a bearing on this was to upload the latest version of Akismet yesterday.
I’m using WordPress 3.0.2
Tony, that function still exists in the 2.5 release of Akismet. I’d suggest contacting the author of the contact form plugin.
Thanks for your reply to my contact form problem, Alex. The authors of the eMember plugin referred me back to you!
Did you double check that the Akismet plugin is activated on your site? As Alex mentioned, the function still exists – http://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/akismet/tags/2.5.0/akismet.php#L109
Okay, I’m having a panic attack. I updated Akismet last week and I like it. But today I upgraded to WordPress 3.0.3 (from 3.0.1) and now I can’t log into my site at all.
When I try to go to admin I get this “Fatal error: Call to undefined function akismet_server_connectivity_ok() in /home1/aisleofc/public_html/honeybeesuite/wp-content/plugins/akismet/admin.php on line 268.”
What can I do?
That function is defined in the akismet/admin.php file, perhaps the upgrade didn’t complete 100%?
For the time being (to get back into your site) I’d recommend renaming the wp-content/plugins/akismet directory to something else, that will basically disable the plugin. Once everything is working again download a fresh copy of the Akismet 2.5.0 plugin and make sure you have all the files in place before activating it again.
Thank you so much, Joseph, I can now get into my site. Of course now spam is happening fast and furious. Is my Akismet API key now lost forever, or can I find it somewhere?
The key is stored in the database, so it should still be there. When you re-install the plugin and activate it, it should find the key and be on its way.
Thanks, Joseph. I’m fairly new to WordPress and it didn’t occur to me that loading an update de-activated the plugin. Not quite the same level of incompetence as not switching on the power – but close! All is working fine now.
Hi Josesph,
I have multiple blogs that are updated via Simple Scripts. I updated them from 3.0.1 to 3.0.3 2 days back, and got the error as described above:
When I try to go to admin I get this “Fatal error: Call to undefined function akismet_server_connectivity_ok() in /home1/aisleofc/public_html/honeybeesuite/wp-content/plugins/akismet/admin.php on line 268.”
I removed the plugin through FTP. Even when I tried to ftp the plugin again and activate again, it failed again. Any suggestions ?
Double check that all of the plugin files are there, sounds like something is missing.
I know you are aware the auto delete spam function on post older than 1 month is broke, but I also wanted to let you know that comments that are clearly SPAM are getting through and sitting waiting approval in my comment “in-box”. I’ve probably had 50-60 that have gotten through in the last couple of days. Looking forward to the new version.
WP Version is 3.0.3
Akismet Version is: 2.5.0
I just hate SPAMMERS! I just love Akismet!
Drop us a line at akismet.com/contact/ and we can help track down what is going on.
A nice option would be to disable the fact that even when you’ve deleted the spam comments an entry still exists in commentmeta with the meta_key of ‘akismet_history’ for that comment. I’m sure that people who get a lot of spam won’t want to be wasting space in their DB storing meta data about spam long since deleted.
I’m personally not a fan of the larger font for the commenter name as it’s the content that draws my eye to whether something’s spam rather than their name so my eye’s being drawn somewhere it shouldn’t. But that’s just my opinion so feel free to disregard!
I’ll take a look at the history issue and see what is going on there.
Thanks for the feedback. We changed the commenter’s name font-size back to 12px in version 2.5.1: http://blog.akismet.com/2010/12/17/akismet-plugin-2-5-1-for-wordpress/
Since upgrading to 2.5, whenever I go to my comments page I see something llike
“Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem prevented Akismet from checking 1 comment. It has been temporarily held for moderation and will be automatically re-checked in 13 mins”
I’m also getting a lot more obvious SPAM comments in my moderation queue.
However, if I go to the Akismet configuration page I see:
“Akismet is working correctly. All servers are accessible.
Akismet server Network Status
66.135.58.61 Accessible
72.233.69.89 Accessible
72.233.69.88 Accessible
66.135.58.62 Accessible
Last checked 1 min ago.”
I tried deleting and reinstalling Akismet and it didn’t help.
Any suggestions?
Sounds like there could still be something stopping the spam check requests from reaching akismet.com. Drop us a note at akismet.com/contact/ and we’ll help track down what is happening.
I’m testing the latest beta release, and noticed that in Edit Posts, the Author column is padded by a few pixels and long names are cut and don’t wrap anymore. Using Firebug I saw akismet.css is using the same class name as WordPress, so overriding it. Is this an expected behavior?
Thanks.
@camu Thanks man. I’ve just sent you an email to get a bit more information. Cheers.
I happened to have the 2.4.0 version of Akismet on my server. I deleted the current version and re-installed the old version and it seems to be working well with WordPress version 3.0.3.
Please fix problem in Dashboard index.php. Here is last comments and Cleared by Akismet, but this Cleared by Akismet take here much space. Below are white, and this information taken up valuable space from Latest Comments.
Thanks for the report. We are looking at alternatives, one of which is to not show that badge at all for the comments display in the dashboard.
Would it be possible to have an option to keep Akismet from tampering with the WordPress UI? For example, I don’t like seeing “Cleared by Akismet” next to each comment. It’s clutter that I don’t care about.
I received this error when I tried to log-in to my admin panel (after upgrading to the latest version of WP and Askimets coinciding upgrade) :
Fatal error: Call to undefined function akismet_server_connectivity_ok() in /home1/mommysal/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/admin.php on line 268
The only way I was then able to access my backend was to move the entire askimet folder out of my plug-ins. I’d like to know if you can tell me how to go about a ‘re-do’ at this point or if this is a common (yet fixable) error.
Thanks so much.
Re-installing the plugin again should take care of that.
Just a quick UI thought, make the statistics page the same style as the other Dashboard pages. It currently has a white background instead of slight grey. Also the fonts are blue instead of dark grey.
But other than that, glad to see that 2.5 fixed the deprecated warnings that the WP Debug mode would show.
P.S. Just bought my first paid license to Akismet, thanks for the great service!
We’ve got some tweaks coming in 2.5.1 that should improve that.
Hi
I recently upgraded to version 2.5 and saw that the font size of commenters’ names in the Comments section has significantly increased.
I see from an earlier reply that this is to draw attention to suspicious commenters. But IMHO, it does not really help in doing that. It just makes that page look out of place with the rest of the WP admin site, as well as distract from the comment body and other fields.
I would request you to either (a) reduce the font to its earlier size, or (b) provide a config option to do so, or (c) point me to the source code where I can edit the size. Is it the .author element in the CSS file?
Thanks
Vijay
Hey Vijay,
Thanks for the feedback. Check out http://blog.akismet.com/2010/12/17/akismet-plugin-2-5-1-for-wordpress/ We reduced the font-size to 12px.
Awesome! And great work – the world would be a much MUCH spammier place without Akismet!
I upgraded to 2.5.1 but spam comments on posts older than one month are still not getting automatically deleted, even though I have that option enabled.
Please use aksimet.com/contact/ to report bugs with the plugin.