Global Moxie

Enabling spam screening

Big Medium offers the option to use the Akismet anti-spam service to screen comments for spam. Akismet is an online service that torture-tests comments with hundreds of tests and then tells Big Medium whether or not it’s spam. If a comment has the scent of processed ham, Big Medium chucks it into the spam bin instead of posting it to the site.

To get started with Akismet, you must have an Akismet “key” — a unique identifier, like an account name, that is provided by the Akismet service. See the Akismet site for info about obtaining a key and the available licenses.

Once you have your key, enabling Akismet is a two-step process:

1. Enter the key in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen (available to administrator accounts only).

2. Enable Akismet by checking the “Akismet” field in the “Visitor Comments” screen of the site’s HTML preferences (“Settings>HTML Preferences,” available to administrator and webmaster accounts only).

Testing the Akismet feature

Akismet is configured to treat any comment submitted under the name “viagra-test-123” as a spam message. So, to test that your Akismet installation is working properly, add a comment to your site, entering “viagra-test-123” (no quotes) in the “your name” field of the comment form.

When you do that, you should get a screen that says that your comment has been held for review, but in fact, if all is working properly, the message should have been added to the spam bin. You can check by going to “Edit>Review Comment Spam” in the control panel menu. If the message is there, then Akismet is enabled and configured properly.

“It’s not working!”

If the message does not appear in the “Review Comment Spam” screen, this indicates a problem with your setup. A few things to check:

1. Make sure that you have entered the correct 12-digit comment key in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen (available to administrator accounts only).

2. Is your server part of a private network that requires a proxy server to access the Internet? If so, be sure to enter the URL of the proxy server in the “Settings>Big Medium Server Info” screen. If you’re not sure whether your network uses a proxy server, check with your network administrator.

3. Ask your hosting company or network administrator if your server is allowed to make outgoing HTTP (web) requests. Some hosts block outgoing connections, which means that Big Medium cannot contact the Akismet server.

4. Check the Big Medium server log for error messages. Big Medium writes an error entry in its log file when it runs into a problem communicating with the Akismet server. Submit a comment, and then check the log for error messages. It’s located here:
   moxiedata/logs/bm_syslog.txt

5. Review the Akismet FAQ.