Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection

Changelog

5.7

Release Date – 23 April 2026

• Add Abilities API support for stats and comment checking, including MCP tool integration.
• Add support for the new Connectors page in the upcoming WordPress 7.0.
• Improve detection of automated spam submissions on the front end.
• Make comment history sorting more resilient when called with invalid data.
• Use wp_get_inline_script_tag() for safer inline script output, and other small security enhancements.
• Add action hooks to allow customization of the admin page header and footer.
• Accessibility improvements.

5.6

Release Date – 12 November 2025

• Improve caching of compatible plugins.
• Explain the key features of Akismet more clearly on the setup page.
• Improve the configuration process to better explain errors when they occur.
• Setup UI cleanup and refresh.
• Improve messaging related to usage limits.

5.5

Release Date – 15 July 2025

• Enable webhooks so that Akismet can process comments asynchronously to detect more types of spam.
• Only include the Akismet widget CSS when the Akismet widget is present
• Improve contrast/readability for certain UI elements

5.4

Release Date – 7 May 2025

• The stats pages now use the user’s locale instead of the site’s locale if they’re different.
• Adds a ‘Compatible plugins’ section that will show installed and active plugins that are compatible with Akismet.
• Akismet now requires PHP version 7.2 or above.

5.3.7

Release Date – 14 February 2025

• Simplify the logic used during a comment-check request to compare comments.

5.3.6

Release Date – 4 February 2025

• Improve the utility of submit-spam and submit-ham requests.
• Modernize styles for the Akismet classic widget.

5.3.5

Release Date – 18 November 2024

• Address compatibility issues with < PHP 7.3 in v5.3.4 release.

5.3.4

Release Date – 18 November 2024

• Improve activation notice on Comments for users who haven’t set up their API key yet.
• Improve notice about commercial site status.

5.3.3

Release Date – 10 July 2024

• Make setup step clearer for new users.
• Remove the stats section from the configuration page if the site has been revoked from the key.
• Skip the Akismet comment check when the comment matches something in the disallowed list.
• Prompt users on legacy plans to contact Akismet support for upgrades.

5.3.2

Release Date – 21 March 2024

• Improve the empty state shown to new users when no spam has been caught yet.
• Update the message shown to users without a current subscription.
• Add foundations for future webhook support.

5.3.1

Release Date – 17 January 2024

• Make the plugin more resilient when asset files are missing (as seen in WordPress Playground).
• Add a link to the ‘Account overview’ page on akismet.com.
• Fix a minor error that occurs when another plugin removes all comment actions from the dashboard.
• Add the akismet_request_args filter to allow request args in Akismet API requests to be filtered.
• Fix a bug that causes some contact forms to include unnecessary data in the comment_content parameter.

5.3

Release Date – 14 September 2023

• Improve display of user notices.
• Add stylesheets for RTL languages.
• Remove initial disabled state from ‘Save changes’ button.
• Improve accessibility of API key entry form.
• Add new filter hooks for Fluent Forms.
• Fix issue with PHP 8.1 compatibility.

5.2

Release Date – 21 June 2023

• Visual refresh of Akismet stats.
• Improve PHP 8.1 compatibility.
• Improve appearance of plugin to match updated stats.
• Change minimum supported PHP version to 5.6 to match WordPress.
• Drop IE11 support and update minimum WordPress version to 5.8 (where IE11 support was removed from WP Core).

5.1

Release Date – 20 March 2023

• Removed unnecessary limit notices from admin page.
• Improved spam detection by including post taxonomies in the comment-check call.
• Removed API keys from stats iframes to avoid possible inadvertent exposure.

5.0.2

Release Date – 1 December 2022

• Improved compatibility with themes that hide or show UI elements based on mouse movements.
• Increased security of API keys by sending them in request bodies instead of subdomains.

5.0.1

Release Date – 28 September 2022

• Added an empty state for the Statistics section on the admin page.
• Fixed a bug that broke some admin page links when Jetpack plugins are active.
• Marked some event listeners as passive to improve performance in newer browsers.
• Disabled interaction observation on forms that post to other domains.

5.0

Release Date – 26 July 2022

• Added a new feature to catch spammers by observing how they interact with the page.

For older changelog entries, please see the additional changelog.txt file delivered with the plugin.