Version 2.5.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. Check the Plugins tab of your wp‑admin dashboard and follow the instructions to auto‑update.
This version of the plugin requires WordPress 3.0 or higher. It fixes several minor issues in the 2.5.0 release, including:
- Fixes a problem with the Auto‑Delete Spam option that prevented spam from being deleted
- The status badge is now displayed only when needed, and is less obtrusive
- Fixes a rare bug that could cause the retry queue to get stuck
- Several minor fixes to the deletion and retry cron jobs
- i18n improvements
If you missed our announcement about the new features in Akismet 2.5, you can find it here.
If you don’t use the WordPress auto update feature, you can manually download the zip package from the Akismet plugin page on WordPress.org.
Akismet 
This release does not seem to fix the bug that was introduced in 2.5.0 where Akismet fails with the message.
“Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem prevented Akismet from checking n comments. It has been temporarily held for moderation and will be automatically re-checked in n mins.”
I’m seeing this on two different WordPress blogs of mine. I never got it before 2.5 and now I see the error all the time.
Any idea when it will be fixed? If you can’t fix it how about putting a “Retry now” button under the error message?
2.5.0 was the first version of the plugin to detect failures in communication with akismet.com and schedule retry attempts. One reason you could be seeing this is because your server periodically looses communication with akismet.com.
The status notification messages was great. Why it is deleted.
It wasn’t completely removed. It is now only shown under certain conditions.
Hey Alex,
Could you please provide some more details on this mention in the change log:
Remove the comment nonce form field from the ‘Akismet Configuration’ page in favor of using a filter, akismet_comment_nonce
I see that the nonce option vanished from the control panel. Can you please provide more details on what it does and how to use it with filters? It would be awesome if that helps combat some spam.
Thanks!
The WordPress docs having more information on nonces – http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Nonces – and filters – http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference
Hey Alex
Curious – does Akismet report the sender’s email address to any anti-spam lists?
I’m asking because I’ve been testing the comments feature to see if CSS for comments look OK on every blog I set up. The email address I use suddenly found itself on a spam list and my emails are bouncing back.
As I never sent spam to anyone, I’m trying to figure out if Akismet had a play in it so I don’t do these tests using my email the next time
Any ideas?
Thanks, bro!
Ivan,
No, we never share email addresses or other private information with anyone. And we don’t share any information at all with email blacklists. Aside from the privacy and ethical problems, there’s not a lot of crossover between email and comment spam so it wouldn’t do much good.
I’ve been using Akismet for a little while and am very pleased with it. However, the neat graph that appears in the statistics page doesn’t seem to reflect what is going on. It currently looks flat at the value of four for the last two months, but Akismet has captured 20 spam in Nov and 12 in Dec.
I am using current WP with Atahualpa theme.
Send the details to support – akismet.com/contact/ – and we can take a closer look.
So what should we ask our hosting providers to do to fix problems with contacting akismet.com? The error message provides no hints as to how to change the configuration.
I have been unable to even verify my key since 2.5.0.
There are any number of things that cause this problem. Any where from how PHP is configured on your server to a firewall or proxy server issue.
Hi there,
For some reason, the Akismet WordPress plugin (v2.5.1) pretends that it cannot reach the Akismet servers. But I have captured HTTP exchanges between my machine and yours: communication happens, but for some reason your servers only return 301 or 404 errors.
It is definitely not a network issue, but I still don’t know how to fix this.
Any hints ?
Can you send us the data you collected – aksimet.com/contact/