I have been getting a lot of spam lately and in order to curtail that I have been looking into captcha-alternative spam fighting tools. Nick Olson recommended that I check out Akismet which is a feature of WordPress but also has a free (and commercial) API for other blog engines.

After a little looking around I found an extension on the BlogEngine.NET website and figured out how to get it installed. It has yet to be seen if it works but I thought I’d lay out the steps since it wasn’t that intuitive to me at all.

Step 1 – Install the Extension

First download the Akismet Extension for BlogEnging.NET. I installed version 1.3 even though I have no idea what version of BlogEngine.NET I have and it seemed to work.

The extension is a zip file containing two C# code files, in order to get it installed you simply copy the code files using FTP (or whatever you use) to your website at [<web>\App_Code\Extensions\].

Using a browser simply navigate to your website, you’ll probably notice a delay of a few seconds as ASP.NET tries to recompile your website. The extension will now show up in your extension manager on the admin site under the Extensions tab.

Step 2 – Get your Akismet API key

This was the most confusing step for me. It turns out that you need to have a WordPress account to get this key and no where at word press is it actually called a Akismet API key. Either create an account at wordpress or log in using an existing account.

Once logged in look for the “My Account” button in the upper left and select Edit Profile.

At the top of your profile it should say “Your WordPress.com API key is: xxxxxxxxxx”. Copy that API key.

Step 3 – Configure BlogEngine.NET

Back in your extension manager from Step 1 click the “Edit” link for the AkismetExtension. Enter the API key copied in step two into the API key field and either the URL for your blog. That’s it!

I’ll let you know if I still get spam. I know it works because I intentionally entered an invalid API key and I could no longer submit comments at all but with the right API key I was able to submit a few test comments.