Spam is the off topic, irrelevant, inappropriate and unwanted comments, pings and even social media tags you’ll receive at some point when running a website. Usually these are bots and not real people leaving comments on your website. The CANSPAM act was passed in 2003 (which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing), but the problem remains bigger than ever.

One of the best solutions to control spam on a WordPress website is with the Akismet plugin by Automattic (the creators of WordPress). Akismet helps to filter, destroy and prevent spam using a variety of built-in features and settings. If you’re using JetPack’s comment module then you’re in luck – all comments automatically get run through Akismet’s filters.

Rather manage your website without the help of a plugin? You can enable stricter commenting rules via the dashboard under Settings > Discussion. By enabling core WordPress options to only allowed registered/logged-in users to comment and requiring manual approval for all comments you can prevent spam but this is time consuming and may discourage users from commenting.