How to avoid spam on your blog and recover a comment you accidentally marked as spam

If you are just starting out with WordPress, you will soon learn that the thrill of attracting visitors to your site may be soon followed by the agony of also attracting spammers.  About four months after I put up this site, I counted 500 instances of spam comments.  Some of it pretty creepy.  Fortunately, none of it was ever published as it got caught in a filter because I set all comments with more than 2 urls to be put up for moderation. (Spam usually has tons of urls).  But still, it was a hassle to look at each one and delete.  I tried to delete them so fast that sometimes I accidentally deleted a real comment.

The best solution I have is to use the plug-in Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short). Just go to their website and follow the instructions.

Not only does it catch most spam, but it waits a couple weeks before permanently deleting it. That way if you accidentally mark a comment as spam, you can recover it. I found some great directions on recovering comments you accidentally marked as spam at from a helpful blogger here.