Was making up some content posts for a few of my blogs and was greeted by an Akismet error within my WordPress Dashboard.  Annoyingly this error was showing up at the top of every single Dashboard page, not just the plugin or home page.  I had assumed that it was just a problem on Akismet’s end and apparently I was right.

After getting the error for about 15 minutes I figured out that my server was unable to contact any of the 5 servers operated by the Akismet spam plugin.  Once I manually checked the servers, via a button at the bottom of the troubleshooting page, everything went back to normal and there were no more errors.

Simple annoyance, no issues, and spam still seems in check.

According to the Akismet website they have reportedly stopped over 11 billion spam comments.  Unsettling however is the figure that only 83% were actual spam.  No doubt Akismet is the best solution to fight spam, but consider that as of this posting Akismet has made over 913 million errors.  Internet wide, but still a good reminder to always check your spam moderation que, you might have some worthwhile comments.