I've had the Akismet anti-spam plugin installed and working great on two of my non-commercial Wordpress blogs for the past couple of months.  Both sites are using my same API key.Today, on one blog I'm getting hit with an unusually high number of spam comments.  About 35 in 24 hours rather than the one or two per day.On the other less popular blog, no new spam.The problem is that the spam is not getting flagged, only held for moderation.  On the comments page, I'm getting this message:Akismet has detected a problem. A server or network problem prevented  Akismet from checking 3 comments. They have been temporarily held for  moderation and will be automatically re-checked in 14 mins.On the plugin configuration page, I get this:The key below was previously validated but a connection to akismet.com  can not be established at this time. Please check your server  configuration.The Akismet Configuration page is loading very slow and sometimes the error clears and the moderated comments are flagged.  Then the error returns.The Server Connectivity section always shows everything is good though:Server Connectivity  All Akismet servers are available.  Akismet is working correctly. All servers are accessible.I've updated Wordpress to the latest (v3.3) and all plugins are up to date.Yes, it's obvious there is an intermittent problem connecting to Akismet; but why/where?So I'm wondering if others are experiencing the same issues today or if there is something new going wrong with my installation, server, etc. I need to fix.
Sudden connection problems with Akismet
wordpress;api;comments;spam prevention;connections
Akismet status was always showing as up during these problems.As per other answer by Jospeh Scott and similar answers posted on the Wordpress Forum, it is suggested that this error is caused by a firewall or another problem on the server.  My reliable hosting provider was very diligent in assisting me troubleshoot this and was unable to find anything wrong so I've ruled this out.However, I'm using a free, unpaid API key (non-commercial sites) and this problem only happened on a day my key was getting slammed with spam.  It seems reasonable to conclude that my API key was simply temporarily throttled.  As per this Akismet page:Paid account perksPriority over free accountsFaster & more reliableNo traffic limits or throttlesAlso, there is no error message contained in the Akismet plugin specific to throttling a non-paid account.  A generic connection error message seems like it would be the next best thing.Since installing a reCaptcha module, thereby reducing the number of API calls to Akismet, the error has not returned.