Akismet - Get Rid of SPAM

Akismet is a must have for any website that allows user added content, such as comments on articles.  I first learned about Akismet because it comes pre-installed with WordPress–all it requires is an activation key.  Depending on the type of blog you’re using, you may choose two types of keys-commercial or personal.

Akismet looks over the comments on your site and determines whether they are legitimate or SPAM. The nice thing is, Akismet is a smart program, meaning it learns from the patterns it perceives.  If you mark something as SPAM, it will remember where that SPAM came from, and mark similar comments as SPAM in the future.

Here’s a picture of how much Akismet has helped this blog:

Could you imagine trying to moderate over 13,000 comments on your website?  Once you’re blog has been around for while, you’re going to get hit by SPAM.  Don’t wait unitl it happens, install Akismet now.

Flash Embed Plugin for WordPress

I had been using PodPress to embed video into one of my sites, but it was pretty annoying to have to click to activate the player, and then click again to play the video.  I was looking for a solution to have a one click video player for my WordPress site and came across Kimili Flash Embed Plugin for WordPress.

You can see an example of how I used it to embed an .swf video file into a WordPress post at WordPress Academy.