Akismet is one of two plugins which come as part of the standard WordPress build (as at version 2.9.1). The second is Hello Dolly which has no purpose and can just be deleted. Akismet, though, is an essential plugin in the fight against recognising spam comments. The advice is very simple: implement it immediately.
One thing you will need is a key from wordpress.com. If you don’t already have an account there you will need to create one. We have a blog there which we have used during the build to report on progress and which in the long term can show site status messages if the main blog is ever down, for instance reports during maintenance periods. That seems a sensible idea. We use the same name as the domain so it is http://egyptological.wordpress.com. That has the added advantage of ensuring that if anybody gets confused about the location of our “WordPress blog” and goes to wordpress.com, they will still find us.
If your magazine is going to be commercial, then instead of using a free Akismet key from wordpress.com, you need to visit Akismet and sign up for a commercial key. There is no need to do it immediately: the rules are that you only need a commercial key when you start making more than $500 per month from your site. At that point the $5 per month for the commercial key will seem reasonable. (Amounts shown are correct at February 2010 but may change so make sure you check the latest terms yourself.)
By Kate Phizackerley