I’m using Askiment, the spam filter that came with WordPress. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into the plug ins I’ve been using and promoting and I am finding out lots of interesting stuff. Did you know that Askimet runs comments through their server? Yup, they have a blacklist and if a commenter is on it, their comments don’t get through. That’s a good reason to make sure you are the one who makes the final decision as to what is spam and what isn’t.

If you don’t like that idea, there’s another choice, SpamKarma2. It decides what is spam and what isn’t based on the criteria that you set up.

I’ve used them both, sometimes at the same time, lol. They both do their job, which is catching spam.

• Askimet – this is an antispam. It uses a formula to decide which comments are most likely to be spam, and adds them to a file for you to approve or delete.

• SpamKarma2 – this is also an antispam. You can use one or the other, or even both if you tend to get a lot of spam in your comments.

• Super-Cache – Helps your blog get cached really fast. Helps stop your server from crashing when your blog gets really popular.

• DbManager – Automatically backs up your MySQL database on a schedule that you set. That is the place where your posts and comments sit. This plug-in depends on whether your host allows you access to the MySQL dump path or not. If your host does not, then the plugin will not work.

• WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Offers one-click upgrade of your WordPress files to the latest version. This plugin also depends on your host to work. If it does work, it will make your life much easier.

• Feedburner Feedsmith – Feedburner is owned by Google. It has lots of cool things to help you gain and keep track of subscribers.

• Sem DoFollow – A snippet of code that tells Google spiders to crawl out links in your comments. May help get people to leave a comment because it makes their comments a true linkback to their site.

• Share This – You may have noticed the rotating icon at the bottom of each of my posts. Share This plug-in allows people to share your posts without adding lots of links to your post. Google only allows 120 links per page and with so many social bookmarking links, you’ll reach your limit in just a few posts.

• Subscribe to Comments – Allows people who comment to receive any other comments you get in their email. This is great for a controversy topics where someone may want to see what other responses are.

There are many, many other great plug-ins out there. What you use will depend on what you want your blog to do. One little known fact is that each plug in comes with it’s own set of files that have to be called when your blog is opened in a browser. The more plugins you have, the slower your blog will open.