From Script-Tutorials.com there's a new post that wants to help you prevent one of the biggest menaces of the social online world - spam. Their solution uses the Akismet service to detect possible spam and notify you.

What is spam? – this is (usually) any message which not relevant to this page – usually just an advertisement of something (and even with a backward link to another site). Yes, you can put the first line of defense – a captcha, but I think spammers are also ready for this and find ways to avoid the CAPTCHA (or, they even can solve its by self). In today’s tutorial I’ll show you how to create a second line of defense against spam - using web services - for example akismet.

They include all the code you'll need to create a simple interface to the Akismet system with the help of this library that handles a lot of the connection and messaging for you. They apply it to a comment form and check the POSTed values against the Akismet spam checking. You can download the full package to get started immediately.

Spam is a constant burden for anyone on the web, be it through email or via something like comments on a website. The NETTUTS site can't help so much with the first one, but they've come up with a new tutorial that can help with the second with a few methods.

Deciding on the best method of spam prevention on your blogs, forums, or even contact forms can be difficult. In this article we will take a look at a service called Akismet and how it can help. We will also look at why some other methods of fighting spam fail.

They give a few ways to waylay the spammers including:

• Disallowing multiple consecutive submissions
• Keyword Blacklist
• CAPTCHA
• and a service called Akismet

They go into a bit more detail on this last one, even going so far as to included code (this class) and examples of how to let the Akismet service see if something is spam or not. Links to libraries for other languages are included too.

For all of you putting off making the upgrade to WordPress 5, Cal Evans' story might be just that last push you need to take the plunge.

I now run WordPress on 4 of my web properties. So let me first say a big thank you to the entire WordPress development community for all their work. [...] In the process of installing and managing these properties, I've learned just a little bit about WordPress and decided that I had better document some of it before it falls out the back of my head.

He steps through the details his install including his pre-install steps, the installation and configuration of the software (including Akismet, SimepleTags, the All in One SEO plugin and interfaces with FeedBurner and a Friend Feed).

Mike Gauthier has created a PEAR-based implementation for the popular Akismet spam filtering system that he's added to the site:

I'd like to let you know about a new PHP 5 implementation of the Akismet REST API. The package, Services_Akismet is MIT licensed and distributed through the official PEAR channel at http://pear.php.net/package/Services_Akismet.

Hopefully this will make it even easier for third-party PHP projects to use Akismet spam tools. The code is well documented and should "just work" on any PHP 5.2.1+ system.

It's currently in its alpha stage and was derived from the miPHP Akismet class written by Bret Kuhns.

The latest official release announcement for the Zend Framework has been posted to the Zend Developer Zone today - version 0.8.0 has been finalized and made available for download.

We're pleased to announce Zend Framework Preview Release 0.8.0. Download it from http://framework.zend.com/.This preview release contains many improvements across virtually the entire set of components in Zend Framework. It's hard to categorize this release as focused on one component or another, because so much great new functionality has been added.

Updates include several packages being moved from the incubator to the core including Zend_Auth, Zend_Filter, Zend_Rest_Client, and Zend_Validate. Improved items include the Zend_Db compontent and the MVC modular application support. Check out this announcement for more details on updates and additions.

The next milestone is Zend Framework Beta 0.9.0, on approximately March 15. This will be our first Beta release. The objective of the Beta is to be feature complete with respect to the components we will include in Zend Framework 1.0. Any component that is still in the incubator in ZF 0.9.0 will probably not be released in ZF 1.0, but such components may appear in future releases after 1.0.

The latest official release announcement for the Zend Framework has been posted to the Zend Developer Zone today - version 0.8.0 has been finalized and made available for download.

We're pleased to announce Zend Framework Preview Release 0.8.0. Download it from http://framework.zend.com/.This preview release contains many improvements across virtually the entire set of components in Zend Framework. It's hard to categorize this release as focused on one component or another, because so much great new functionality has been added.

Updates include several packages being moved from the incubator to the core including Zend_Auth, Zend_Filter, Zend_Rest_Client, and Zend_Validate. Improved items include the Zend_Db compontent and the MVC modular application support. Check out this announcement for more details on updates and additions.

The next milestone is Zend Framework Beta 0.9.0, on approximately March 15. This will be our first Beta release. The objective of the Beta is to be feature complete with respect to the components we will include in Zend Framework 1.0. Any component that is still in the incubator in ZF 0.9.0 will probably not be released in ZF 1.0, but such components may appear in future releases after 1.0.

Ryan points out a handy tool to help keep even more spammers from making their way to your blogs and posting comments - Bad Behavior.

I love Akismet the spam filter for comments that is built into Wordpress. It's blocked 812 spam comments in a little under 2 months for me. I was content with it, but I grew tiresome that it would even get to my site. Akismet is great for blocking spams that are already to your blog, but there has to be something out there that would block the spammers from coming to your site in the first place.

Luckily there is something like that, it's called Bad Behavior.

Luckily, it's also made for Wordpress, so you can download and install directly with no fuss. He comments that he's already seeing results with even more caught than Akismet was before.

Ryan points out a handy tool to help keep even more spammers from making their way to your blogs and posting comments - Bad Behavior.

I love Akismet the spam filter for comments that is built into Wordpress. It's blocked 812 spam comments in a little under 2 months for me. I was content with it, but I grew tiresome that it would even get to my site. Akismet is great for blocking spams that are already to your blog, but there has to be something out there that would block the spammers from coming to your site in the first place.

Luckily there is something like that, it's called Bad Behavior.

Luckily, it's also made for Wordpress, so you can download and install directly with no fuss. He comments that he's already seeing results with even more caught than Akismet was before.

If you're tired of spam comments or people flooding your PHP application with junk text and links, you'll definitely want to check out this new tutorial from PHPit.net. It looks at how to integrate the Akismet anti-spam service into your application.

To start off right, you need to know how the service works and what kind of methods you'll need to access it. They show a simple connection to the service as well as two functions to mark something as spam and to mark it as non-spam (or 'ham' as he calls it). He also links to their development page and to the WordPress plugin that performs the same action.

If you're tired of spam comments or people flooding your PHP application with junk text and links, you'll definitely want to check out this new tutorial from PHPit.net. It looks at how to integrate the Akismet anti-spam service into your application.

To start off right, you need to know how the service works and what kind of methods you'll need to access it. They show a simple connection to the service as well as two functions to mark something as spam and to mark it as non-spam (or 'ham' as he calls it). He also links to their development page and to the WordPress plugin that performs the same action.