Akismet troubles traced back to DNS issues.

My API key for Akismet was suddenly unconfirmed by reason of not being able to reach akismet.com My provider had indeed troubles with their primary DNS so I switched to the google public one. (8.8.8.8). This is a server not a browsing machine so I don’t have any privacy worries.

Long storry short, I changed the DNS and expected the problem to go away. Next day I was happy to find out that it didn’t. I pinged akismet.com from the console, tried http connection to it with links everything was fine. For good measure I tried other DNS entries, tried a mtr to akismet.com but still everything was fine and the key in Akismet Configuration refused to work.

Than, after a slap on my forehead I remembered THIS. Right, after

service httpd stop
service httpd start

Everything went back to normal.