Version 4.1.1 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin is Now Available

by Christopher Finke January 31, 2019 3 comments

Version 4.1.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:

  • We updated the “Setup Akismet” notice so that it resizes to fit all screen sizes.
  • We improved the Akismet settings page so the “Save Changes” button is only highlighted when a change has been made.
  • We fixed a bug that could have been causing the count of spam comments displayed on the dashboard to be up to an hour old rather than the current count.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.1 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Christopher Finke November 12, 2018

Version 4.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available and contains the following changes:

  • We added a WP-CLI method for retrieving Akismet stats: wp akismet stats
  • Akismet now hooks into the new “Personal Data Eraser” functionality from WordPress 4.9.6 to ensure that any personal data stored by Akismet is erased when requested.
  • We’ve updated the plugin to more quickly clear outdated alert messages.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.0.8 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Josh Smith June 19, 2018 4 comments

Version 4.0.8 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available.

4.0.8 contains the following changes:

  • Improved the grammar and consistency of the in-admin privacy related notes (notice and config).
  • Revised in-admin explanation of the comment form privacy notice to make its usage clearer.
  • Added rel=”nofollow noopener” to the comment form privacy notice to improve SEO and security.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Customisation options for the Akismet front-end privacy notice

by Stephane Daury June 7, 2018

To help your site be transparent to your visitors about using Akismet to process comments (think privacy and GDPR), our WordPress plugin now gives you the option to display a notice under your site’s comment forms. Site owners can decide if they want to display it, or not, on a per-blog basis.

But we’ve also given options to developers to extend the behaviour, and content, of said notice.

WordPress option

The display of the notice itself, as well as the in-admin notice to set it for one’s site, all revolves around a new akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice option, which needs to be set to either display or hide.

If the option is not yet set, the front-end notice will not be displayed, but the in-admin prompting site owners to set it will.

Once set to either display or hide, the front-end notice will match the choice, and the in-admin notice will disappear.

Filters

In class.akismet.php, there is a new Akismet::display_comment_form_privacy_notice() method, in which you can find the following filters to extend.

  • akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice:
    Overrides the returned value of the akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice option. This value can be display, or hide, and controls the display of the front-end privacy notice under comment forms.
  • akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice_markup:
    Lets you customise the text and markup of the actual notice, which defaults to '<p class="akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice">' . sprintf( __( 'This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. <a href="%s" target="_blank">Learn how your comment data is processed</a>.', 'akismet' ), 'https://akismet.com/privacy/' ) . '</p>'. Note that if you choose to modify the markup, something needs to eventually point your users to https://akismet.com/privacy/, which will always display, or redirect to, our most up-to-date privacy related documentation.

CSS

As seen above, the default front-end privacy notice is wrapped in a <p class="akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice"></p> tag, which you can extend via stylesheets and Javascript.

WP Multisite or multiple WP installs

If you have a lot of sites/blogs, you might also now be wanting to set the privacy display in bulk.

There are a few ways of doing that.

You can create a quick plugin that checks if the akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice option is set, and if it is not, set it for the current blog: update_option( 'akismet_comment_form_privacy_notice', $state ); where $state is either display or hide.

Or you could write a script that loops on your blog list, and set the same option, in one run.

Version 4.0.7 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Josh Smith May 28, 2018 3 comments

Version 4.0.7 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available.

4.0.7 contains the following changes:

  • Based on user feedback, the link on “Learn how your comment data is processed.” in the optional privacy notice now has a target of _blank and opens in a new tab/window.
  • Updated the in-admin privacy notice to use the term “comment” instead of “contact” in “Akismet can display a notice to your users under your comment forms.”
  • Only show in-admin privacy notice if Akismet has an API Key configured

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.0.6 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Stephane Daury May 26, 2018

Version 4.0.6 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. If you are paying attention to version numbers, you will notice that we went from 4.0.3 to 4.0.6 in one day. This is because we got user reports of issues with older versions of PHP with our intermediary versions, which we jumped on fixing right away.

4.0.6 contains the following changes:

  • Added a hook to provide Akismet-specific privacy information for a site’s privacy policy.

  • Added tools to control the display of a privacy related notice under comment forms.

  • Fixed HTML in activation failure message to close META and HEAD tag properly.

  • Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent Akismet from being correctly auto-configured.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.0.3 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Josh Smith February 19, 2018 2 comments

Version 4.0.3 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available.

4.0.3 contains a few helpful changes:

  • Adds a new scheduled task to clear out old Akismet entries in the wp_commentmeta table that no longer have corresponding comments in wp_comments.  This should help reduce Akismet’s database usage for some users.
  • Adds a new akismet_batch_delete_count action so developers can optionally take action when Akismet comment data is cleaned up.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.

Version 4.0.2 of the Akismet WordPress Plugin Is Now Available

by Stephane Daury December 18, 2017

Version 4.0.2 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available.

4.0.2 contains a few helpful changes:

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Akismet to recheck a comment that has already been manually approved or marked as spam.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Akismet to claim that some comments are still waiting to be checked when no comments are waiting to be checked.

To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.