Blacklisted by Akismet – How to fix being banned and escape from Comment Hell

Banned! NOTE! I just found out my comments apparently are being blacklisted by Akismet once again. Joy! NOT!

I wrote the following last year and will be applying it to meself once again. I’ll keep you posted!

— Barbara Ling

Morning! You know, when growing up my mom was always fond of telling her friends,

"If anything is going to happen, it will ALWAYS happen to my daughter."

And now that I’m a mom myself, I have to just wonder….how on EARTH did she know this engraved-in-cement fact? And more importantly yet,

when will I pass this, ahem, joyful characteristic to my OWN children so I can actually live a vaguely (dare I even breathe the word?) normal life?

The recent events have shown me…’taint anytime soon!

Take 3 days ago. Now, as you’re probably aware, one of the ways to build up your readership is to intelligently comment on other posts at other blogs. Even better, if those sites have the WordPress Plugin Comment Luv, you can generate a deep backlink to your blog as well! This is one reason why my metablogging site AskOwlbert has over 1,500 backlinks generated within 2 months, and my backlinks are happily growing even as we speak (write? Communicate? Mind-meld? etc.etc.etc.).

So!

There I was, happily commenting my little heart out and uncovering really superlative blogs online, when I noticed something weirder than my sons begging me to forbid them computer usage and ice cream desserts.

My comments (insert ominous music here)…… weren’t showing up.

I didn’t even get any "your comments are awaiting moderation" notices.

It was bizarre; my comments were being treated like they had embraced the plague. One site could be chalked up to "these things happen"….but these things were happening at every site! So of course, I donned on my Sherlock Holmes hat and dove into uncovering the answer.

The answer…she wasn’t pretty. I discovered that the wondrously useful plugin Akismet was gently (with the force of a tornado) depositing my comments into the spam queue.

Joy…this was not.

So! Figuring that these things happen (to me again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and ….), I looked for the solution and found:

The solution was to visit the Akismet Contact Page and submit a support/feature request.

I dropped them a messsage that introduced me and my site (and made certain to put spaces in my domain name in case THAT got put into the spam queue) and described the problem I was encountering.

The result?

Yesterday I received email from Mark and the problem was fixed.

Yay! My commenting now works! This really does highlight the following proactive issues. Here they are, step by step:

Step 1.) ALWAYS notice when weird things happen.

It might be a glitch…then again, it might not.

Step 2.) Be open to debugging.

If you’re experiencing problems with commenting, it could be that the various spam plugins on the Internet are laughing hysterically at your domain. Visit your OWN blog, submit a comment, and then see where it goes. If it gets spammized, deactive your spam plugins, one by one, and test it again until your comment goes live.

The last plugin you deactived is the one which is causing the opportunity for a bazillion grey hairs.

Step 3.) Search online for the plugin name and the keyword "blacklisted", "banned" and/or "HELP!"

I used the following searches:

It brought me to the blog postings I had mentioned above.

Step 4.) Contact the anti-spam plugin author.

Chances are, the problems you’re encountering really are just a glitch – alert the plugin author to your dilemma and ask for help. It’s that easy. Remember, your domain/website is how you make money online. Be proactive when things go wrong – you’re the only one who can set in motion the ability to fix it. You just simply have to give yourself permission to contact whomever is required; chances are, they’ll be happy to repair it.

Enjoy!

Barbara