I've a problem with my akismet. When I browsed through akismet configuration it shows "Network functions are disabled. Your web host or server administrator has disabled PHP's fsockopen or gethostbynamel functions. Akismet cannot work correctly until this is fixed. Please contact your web host or firewall administrator and give them this information about Akismet's system requirements." When contacted with the web host, they say these functions are disabled for free accounts. Can anybody help me regarding this?? Is there any way to block the spammers for my wordpress blog??
I would definitely try going into your Akismet settings within your Wordpress Admin to see if you can fix the problem from there. I personally have not dealt with this and I don't know anyone who has.