Support » Plugin: Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection » Site slow; thousands of comments "awaiting spam check"

  • I have been using Akismet for a long time and never had a problem with it.

    However today I suddenly have thousands of comments in the moderation queue, my site is running very slowly and I’m having difficulty accessing admin pages.

    When I am able to get into the edit comments screen I see these comments are almost entirely spam and all are denoted as “awaiting spam check”.

    It seems there is a problem checking comments against the Akismet server – can anyone suggest how to fix this?

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • @notpoppy,

    My sites lost connection to Akismet recently, my hosting provider tried all sorts of things to fix it. In the end it resolved on one site by updating to the current development version:
    http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/akismet.zip

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    It seems to have regained connection now and I’m slowly working through the 3,000-plus spam comments still in the moderation queue.

    I paid for Akismet, why am I still getting spam comments/posts on my site? Grrrr!!!

    Plugin Author Christopher Finke

    (@cfinke)

    Marking as resolved. kpphotography, if you’d like to talk more about the spam you’re seeing, please start a new support thread.

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    Afraid we need to mark this as unresolved again as the problem has returned. Seems to be the same symptoms as before, only I’ve noticed it earlier so we’re talking about a few hundred comments rather than thousands.

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    (Have now marked as unresolved – didn’t see the menu at first!)

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    Have had the problem for ten hours now, over 4,000 comments in moderation and the admin areas of the site are virtually unusable.

    I was able to get into the plugins section and, strangely, deactivating Akismet doesn’t seem to have any effect. New spam comments still go into moderation straight away – I didn’t think that would happen without Akismet. And the admin pages are still running really slowly.

    So although I definitely still have the problem I’m less sure I understand it and now think it may be nothing to do with Akismet at all. If anyone can shed some light I’d be very grateful.

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    This has now degenerated to the point where the site is virtually unusable, both admin and public pages. Any help gratefully received.

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    It seems that regardless of whether Akismet is activated or not, all comments go into moderation, irrespective of whether they are legitimate or spam.

    Thread Starter notpoppy

    (@notpoppy)

    No, wait, I’m wrong:

    When Akismet is activated, all comments go into moderation as ‘pending’.

    When Akismet is not activated, obvious spam comments go into moderation as ‘pending’, most clean comments do not.

    Still it appears in either scenario spam comments are not being put in the spam folder. The last ones that did so (which weren’t put there manually by me) were 16 hours ago, when the problem first began.

    Plugin Author Christopher Finke

    (@cfinke)

    notpoppy: Is it possible that your API key has been suspended? That sounds like a possibility. Can you email support@akismet.com with your key so we can check on it?

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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