Since I've upgraded to WordPress 2.8.2 and a new version of spam-killer Akismet, I've had an annoying error message just about every time I've looked at the dashboard of any of the blogs I look after:

Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem is preventing Akismet from working correctly.

Clicking for more information gets me an even more alarming message:

Server Connectivity

Unable to reach any Akismet servers.

A network problem or firewall is blocking all connections from your web server to Akismet.com. Akismet cannot work correctly until this is fixed. Please contact your web host or firewall administrator and give them this information about Akismet and firewalls.

As someone else said on the WP support forum, I think it's a bit of a glitch. Even if you have a bunch of red bars saying the Akismet server can't be reached, refresh that page, and they all go green, indicating that your spam filters are back in place.

As far as I can see, this error message is not indicative of any real problem. Akismet is still catching spam for me. It's either an over-enthusiastic error message, or an under-enthusiastic server that isn't responding to my constant pings.

Sensible people will probably just ignore this message. But if you really can't live with it (and I'm getting pretty close to unbearably annoyed myself) this is how to get rid of it.

• Go to Plugins, Editor and select Akismet.
• Find function akismet_warning() {
echo "
<div id='akismet-warning' class='updated fade'><p><strong>".__('Akismet has detected a problem.')."</strong> ".sprintf(__('A server or network problem is preventing Akismet from working correctly. <a href="%1$s">Click here for more information</a> about how to fix the problem.'), "plugins.php?page=akismet-key-config")."</p></div>
";
}
  Note, all those line breaks are there in the original. Change it to function akismet_warning() {
//echo "<div id='akismet-warning' class='updated fade'><p><strong>".__('Akismet has detected a problem.')."</strong> ".sprintf(__('A server or network problem is preventing Akismet from working correctly. <a href="%1$s">Click here for more information</a> about how to fix the problem.'), "plugins.php?page=akismet-key-config")."</p></div>";
}
  In other words, get rid of the line breaks (or you'll get error messages) and comment out the warning.

I'm not deleting it altogether because I'm sure that removing error messages isn't - overall - a good idea. It's just that this one is so very annoying and doesn't actually mean there's a problem.

Tags: 2.8.2, Akismet, glitch

Posted by Sue on July 23, 2009 in WordPress.