Notice: The plugin has been updated since this posting.

I’m pleased to announce version 0.3 of the WordPress SpamAssassin Plugin. Based on reports that it actually works, I’ve changed its status from “pre-alpha” to “alpha.” In addition, the following improvements are in this new version:

• Improved message format passed to SA prevents the wrong rules firing. This was causing some messages to be marked as not spam when they should have been marked as spam. (Patch contributed by Anonymous Coward)
• The plugin can now speak to SA via the UNIX domain socket, if SA is running on the same machine as WordPress. Set the name of SA’s UNIX domain socket in the plugin source. (Patch contributed by the same Anonymous Coward)
• Suspicious messages, those whose score is above 0 but below the SA spam threshold, are now tagged for moderation. You can configure the suspicious threshold. To make this work, configure the spam tag in the plugin, and add the spam tag to your moderation keywords. (I don’t do this automatically.) If a non-spam comment is moderated, edit the comment, removing the moderation tag, and then approve it.
• Comcast users will find that they can actually post comments to my blog now. SA does tag most of them as suspicious, though.

For more information be sure to see the original announcement. Also if you are placing this page in your linkroll please link instead to http://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/wp-spamassassin/ as this is a permalink which always points to the latest entry.

Please note that this plugin requires WordPress version 1.2 or later, and a version of PHP with sockets enabled. Since this is enabled at most installations, it shouldn’t be a problem, but if you find the plugin isn’t connecting to SpamAssassin, check phpinfo() to ensure your version of PHP has sockets support.

Update 22 Jan: Please see the new permanent page to download or view the plugin.