There is no perfect spam proof program. Spammers work overtime to get through, and luckily, Akismet learns as you use it. Some days, I get 1-3% through and other days I get none, but some always gets through. When applied to 700 comment spam that attack my blog in ONE DAY, I can live with the 3-5 that gets through. Can’t you? Much better than the alternative. Just give it a little more time.

On the assumption you make, I didn’t say that, nor think that, but many probably do. I do know that while WordPress has become more robust, it takes one glitch in a Plugin or “improvements” WordPress makes to make the white screen of death or “Database Error” page appear to the public and to me trying to access my blog after an upgrade. Thus, this veteran knows to turn off everything before upgrading. The few comment spam that slip through are nothing compared to the white screen of death.

While some things maybe running in the background, they aren’t if I turned them off in order to avoid the bork in the blog. After the “clean” upgrade is tested, I turn on each Plugin one at a time to make sure it plays nicely. That’s the time consuming bit of an upgrade for me.

It’s really frustrating to hear that so many popular Plugins don’t work now with the new version of WordPress and that there isn’t a security patch to protect those who don’t want to lose access to those Plugins by upgrading. The loss of Customizable Post Listings is very disappointing as I’ve been relying upon that fabulous Plugin for three years or more…can’t remember. Got it as soon as it came out. That’s a long time and it’s become like family.

SIGH.