I’ve decided to disclose the plugins used on this website, especially since this is a testbed site for technology and various web experiments.

Since it’s still the first hour of life for this website, the first plugins installed were Akismet Anti-Spam, which I only had to enable and configure, and a Google reCaptcha plugin that supports invisible reCaptcha. I also deleted the Hello Dolly plugin, for good measure. Then I enabled Gutenberg by activating it as a plugin, since that was the plan all along. 

What do they do?

• Akismet does some checks against a central database and eliminates most comment spam from your wordpress powered website. Works pretty good and has a free layer. 
• Google reCaptcha makes sure you’re not a malicious bot. If (and only if) your browser behavior or your other internet parameters (such as the IP) are suspicious, it presents you with a challenge. Normally, that should only be a checkbox you have to click, but you might get the annoying “identify cars in these pictures” or similar challenge. 
• Gutenberg is the new editor that will come by default in WordPress 5.0, which is scheduled to be released today.

What’s next? I’ll keep you posted. 

On a side note, the Gutenberg editing experience seems pretty satisfying so far, but hey, I’ve only used normal paragraphs and an unordered list. Plus some backgrounds on some paragraphs, but I might decide to come back and take em out shortly.