Want to Moderate Comments on your blog in WordPress to keep your site safe and clean from spammers but don’t know how to proceed, and what to do? Here, you will get a comprehensive, and free guide on how to control and combat comments right on your site. Creating a website from scratch is not hard work but it needs effort, resources, and time to grow. Commenting allows users to engage with you, increase subscribers, take action and grow blog readership.
So, your website must have a comment form to let visitors remark on your content, engage with you, and collaborate. That’s absolutely right and of crucial importance to bloggers but what is frustrating is that some users engage in the worst tactics to post spam comments, link irrelevant texts, and add unwanted keywords, and URL in the field provided therein.
Spamming in blog comments has been increasing day by day though it was not so widespread in 2003, as now it is. If you leave your site open to such degrading conditions, it will cast a negative impact on your site including SEO, and the site will decrease in search results. Comment moderation is a must-have for bloggers to keep their sites free from unsolicited texts and get a higher ranking in search results in the top search engines. So follow this article till the end, and learn how to moderate comments on your blog in WordPress.
What Is Comment
Comments are certain reactions or opinions of other readers, bloggers, and visitors who add to the comment form or section on your blog and post to let you inform their views and feedback on your content. Every WordPress site has a built-in comment section that lets visitors write their opinion and post so that the site admin or editor can take proper action on it.
Naturally, comments are plain texts consisting of messages, keywords, or texts with links. Comments allow users to exchange, share or cooperate opinions with each other on the blogging platforms.
Both the comment form and posted comments(which are approved) appear after a post or page. This lets you enter an email address, type a name, write comments, and post from the front-end side.
Do you know how to moderate comments on your blog in WordPress?
What Is Comment Moderation?
Comment moderation is a process that lets you check or filter the comments and take an action on them by trashing, marking them as spam, deleting, or approving. Taking an action is necessary provided that you want to moderate comments on your blog.
In moderating comments, WordPress has a built-in Comment menu that you can access by scrolling down to it from your WP-Admin bar. This menu contains all the submenu or tabs to let you take proper action on your comments.
You can moderate comments from WP-Admin>>Comments>>Approve,Spam,or Trash. Also, you can check history, reply, edit or make quick editing on it.
Under the Comments menu, there are six submenus, such as Mine, Pending, Approved, Spam, and Trash. Each of the menus has a specific function for moderating comments. The Pending menu lets you see all the pending comments on which you can take specific functions.
Just put your cursor on the comment section, or on the comments, and the button will appear therein. You can see six buttons, such as Approve, Reply, Quick Edit, Edit, Spam, and Trash.
Go to Approve and click on it to make your comments approved. Once the comments approved will appear after your post which you can see in the comment section.
You can even unapprove comments by clicking on the Unapprove button which you can see just below the approved comments.
As want to moderate comments you must set up a comment moderation plugin or tool. Akismet is a free plus premium plugin used to moderate comments. It has an advanced and large database to detect comments before it reaches your site’s comment folder.
Once comments are caught as spam, you can delete them permanently or mark them as not spam, whatever is applicable.
Want to trash comments? Move over to the comments and hit on the Trash button. It will make comments valueless and of no use. However, if needed, you can click on the Restore button to recover your comments.
You can moderate comments in several ways based on several filtering and detection rules.
Akismet or other comments controlling systems mark your comments as spam if they are detected so in their filtering database.
Don’t know how to check comment history. When you log in to your WP-Admin, scroll down until you reach the Comments menu. Click on it and it will show you five submenus and it contains a submenu called History.
Click on this history menu to look into comments history right from your WordPress.
Log in to WP-Admin>>Comments>Hover over comments and click History to check your comments’ history.
How to Trash Comment
When you trash comments, they are marked as defunct and of no value to your content in terms of user engagement. Which kind of comments you should trash? You can do this only for those comments that you want to make of no effect on your content owing to having unsolicited texts, messages, links, or keywords that the spammers want to take advantage of.
On the other hand, you can hit upon the trash button before deleting such comments. You can moderate comments using a number of ways and trashing is one of them.
So, go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>Hover over comments>>Hit Trash, to dub your comments as trash.
How to Mark Comments as Spam?
While moderating comments, you can mark them as Spam if the comments are irrelevant to your content, contain unsolicited keywords, or texts or the mailbox does not exist. Thanks to Akismet comments detection service, it can mark visitors’ comments as spam if they are not real or make sense to your blog.
Go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>Hover over comments and click Spam to mark the fake comments as Spam.
Also, you can moderate comments by deleting them permanently from the comment section. You can delete only those comments which are marked as Spam or Trash.
Want to delete comments? Go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>click Trash,or Spam>>Click Delete.
How to Approve Comments?
When you moderate comments, you can do it in several ways and the Approve button lets you approve your comments. Hover your cursor over the comments, it will show six action buttons to take necessary action for users’ comments.
So, go to Comments from WP-admin>>Comments>Hover over comments and click Approve.
Once a user’s comments approved, they will appear after your blog content.
How to Restore Comments
You can restore comments from WP-Admin>>Comments>>Trash>>Restore. You can moderate comments by clicking on the Restore button under the Trash button. This option is available only for the comments marked as Trash.
How to Turn Comments on or off for Individual Post?
WordPress Editor lets you turn comments on or off for individual post right from the editor itself. Come to your post’s editing screen, go to the right of the Settings icon, and scroll down along the scroll bar of the editor until you reach the Discussion tab.
Open the Discussion tab and you will see two check boxes, such as (1)Allow Comments, and (2)Allow pingbacks & trackbacks.
To turn off comments for a particular post, leave the ‘Allow Comments’ box unchecked.
On the other hand, if you check the boxes, it will turn on comments, and pingbacks & trackbacks for your post.
WordPress lets you turn on or off comments for an individual post.
So, Open your WordPress Editor>>Settings>>Discussion>>Check or Leave unchecked the Comments box. Once you’ve chosen your option, click Save draft to make changes effective.
Comments Settings Configuration
WordPress allows you to configure comment settings for the entire site. Once you set up this configuration, it will affect the whole site. It has multiple sections to configure several settings for comments users including notifications, users’ names & emails, closing threshold time, threaded levels, etc.
So, set up this configuration before you start to moderate comments appearing on your site.
You can set up comments configuration under Settings>>Discussion from within your WP-Admin panel.
Default Post Settings
On the Discussion Settings, the first configuration you have to make is on Default Post Settings. It has three boxes that you can check or uncheck for certain functions. The first box lets your blog notify other blogs when you link to them in an article or post.
The second option lets other blogs notify your article when they link to your article as pingbacks and trackbacks.
Similarly checking the third option lets other bloggers and readers post new comments on your post. I recommend only checking the third and the first box, or only the third box. Leave the second option unchecked, otherwise, it may generate a lot of spam comments having negative effects on your site and SEO.
Enabling the first option may cause a slowdown to your site. That’s why don’t check it.
Other Comment Settings
The other comment settings is the next section in the comment configuration page that contains more than six options. Checking the first option is recommended, which allows a user to enter his name and email in the comment form.
I recommend unchecking the second check box which if checked, the user can’t post comments unless he gets registered and logs in to his account.
Don’t make threaded comments of more than five levels, as it creates difficulties for users when they want to read the nested comments one by one.
You must configure these other settings options to moderate comments on your site properly.
Comment ModerationSettings
This section allows comments to undergo moderation on account of posting comments with unsolicited hyperlinks. So, check the box labeled as ‘A comment is held for moderation.
Also, check the third and fourth options. Once you enable these options, your system will not approve the posted comments on autopilot, rather you have to approve them manually. Checking these two boxes is of crucial importance if you want to moderate comments and hold them for containing unwanted hyperlinks.
Avatar Settings on WordPress Comment System
The last section on your comment settings page allows you to choose Avatar display and settings. It has multiple options to show Gravatars. These are certain images that appear next to the comment author’s name.
Check the box ‘Show Avatars’ to enable it to comment author’s image. WordPress uses Mystery Person as the default Avatar if the comment author does not set up a custom logo or image for his user profile. This is a generic logo displaying for all comment authors if they do have not their own images.
You must configure comment settings for your entire site to moderate comments. Once you have configured these setting options properly, the comment system will start working on autopilot and minimize spam, unwanted links, and black hat tactics used by some dark web users.
Safiqul Islam is a full-time blogger, writes on WordPress, web hosting, domain, guides, SEO and tutorials. I love to share my experience with the rest of the world. My mission is to teach my blogging expertise, startup guides and lessons to the next generation of online undertakers so as to grow their brand, business and influence.
How to Moderate Comments in Blog? 9 Point Crucial Guides
Want to Moderate Comments on your blog in WordPress to keep your site safe and clean from spammers but don’t know how to proceed, and what to do? Here, you will get a comprehensive, and free guide on how to control and combat comments right on your site. Creating a website from scratch is not hard work but it needs effort, resources, and time to grow. Commenting allows users to engage with you, increase subscribers, take action and grow blog readership.
So, your website must have a comment form to let visitors remark on your content, engage with you, and collaborate. That’s absolutely right and of crucial importance to bloggers but what is frustrating is that some users engage in the worst tactics to post spam comments, link irrelevant texts, and add unwanted keywords, and URL in the field provided therein.
Spamming in blog comments has been increasing day by day though it was not so widespread in 2003, as now it is. If you leave your site open to such degrading conditions, it will cast a negative impact on your site including SEO, and the site will decrease in search results. Comment moderation is a must-have for bloggers to keep their sites free from unsolicited texts and get a higher ranking in search results in the top search engines. So follow this article till the end, and learn how to moderate comments on your blog in WordPress.
What Is Comment
Comments are certain reactions or opinions of other readers, bloggers, and visitors who add to the comment form or section on your blog and post to let you inform their views and feedback on your content. Every WordPress site has a built-in comment section that lets visitors write their opinion and post so that the site admin or editor can take proper action on it.
Naturally, comments are plain texts consisting of messages, keywords, or texts with links. Comments allow users to exchange, share or cooperate opinions with each other on the blogging platforms.
Both the comment form and posted comments(which are approved) appear after a post or page. This lets you enter an email address, type a name, write comments, and post from the front-end side.
Do you know how to moderate comments on your blog in WordPress?
What Is Comment Moderation?
Comment moderation is a process that lets you check or filter the comments and take an action on them by trashing, marking them as spam, deleting, or approving. Taking an action is necessary provided that you want to moderate comments on your blog.
In moderating comments, WordPress has a built-in Comment menu that you can access by scrolling down to it from your WP-Admin bar. This menu contains all the submenu or tabs to let you take proper action on your comments.
Also, read:
How to Remove website field URL from comment form?
How to Moderate Comments
You can moderate comments from WP-Admin>>Comments>>Approve,Spam,or Trash. Also, you can check history, reply, edit or make quick editing on it.
Under the Comments menu, there are six submenus, such as Mine, Pending, Approved, Spam, and Trash. Each of the menus has a specific function for moderating comments. The Pending menu lets you see all the pending comments on which you can take specific functions.
Just put your cursor on the comment section, or on the comments, and the button will appear therein. You can see six buttons, such as Approve, Reply, Quick Edit, Edit, Spam, and Trash.
Go to Approve and click on it to make your comments approved. Once the comments approved will appear after your post which you can see in the comment section.
You can even unapprove comments by clicking on the Unapprove button which you can see just below the approved comments.
As want to moderate comments you must set up a comment moderation plugin or tool. Akismet is a free plus premium plugin used to moderate comments. It has an advanced and large database to detect comments before it reaches your site’s comment folder.
Once comments are caught as spam, you can delete them permanently or mark them as not spam, whatever is applicable.
Want to trash comments? Move over to the comments and hit on the Trash button. It will make comments valueless and of no use. However, if needed, you can click on the Restore button to recover your comments.
You can moderate comments in several ways based on several filtering and detection rules.
Akismet or other comments controlling systems mark your comments as spam if they are detected so in their filtering database.
Also read:
How to Check Comment History
Don’t know how to check comment history. When you log in to your WP-Admin, scroll down until you reach the Comments menu. Click on it and it will show you five submenus and it contains a submenu called History.
Click on this history menu to look into comments history right from your WordPress.
Log in to WP-Admin>>Comments>Hover over comments and click History to check your comments’ history.
How to Trash Comment
When you trash comments, they are marked as defunct and of no value to your content in terms of user engagement. Which kind of comments you should trash? You can do this only for those comments that you want to make of no effect on your content owing to having unsolicited texts, messages, links, or keywords that the spammers want to take advantage of.
On the other hand, you can hit upon the trash button before deleting such comments. You can moderate comments using a number of ways and trashing is one of them.
So, go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>Hover over comments>>Hit Trash, to dub your comments as trash.
How to Mark Comments as Spam?
While moderating comments, you can mark them as Spam if the comments are irrelevant to your content, contain unsolicited keywords, or texts or the mailbox does not exist. Thanks to Akismet comments detection service, it can mark visitors’ comments as spam if they are not real or make sense to your blog.
Go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>Hover over comments and click Spam to mark the fake comments as Spam.
Want to a free Akismet API key for your site?
How to Delete Comments Permanently?
Also, you can moderate comments by deleting them permanently from the comment section. You can delete only those comments which are marked as Spam or Trash.
Want to delete comments? Go to WP-Admin>>Comments>>click Trash,or Spam>>Click Delete.
How to Approve Comments?
When you moderate comments, you can do it in several ways and the Approve button lets you approve your comments. Hover your cursor over the comments, it will show six action buttons to take necessary action for users’ comments.
So, go to Comments from WP-admin>>Comments>Hover over comments and click Approve.
Once a user’s comments approved, they will appear after your blog content.
How to Restore Comments
You can restore comments from WP-Admin>>Comments>>Trash>>Restore. You can moderate comments by clicking on the Restore button under the Trash button. This option is available only for the comments marked as Trash.
How to Turn Comments on or off for Individual Post?
WordPress Editor lets you turn comments on or off for individual post right from the editor itself. Come to your post’s editing screen, go to the right of the Settings icon, and scroll down along the scroll bar of the editor until you reach the Discussion tab.
Open the Discussion tab and you will see two check boxes, such as (1)Allow Comments, and (2)Allow pingbacks & trackbacks.
To turn off comments for a particular post, leave the ‘Allow Comments’ box unchecked.
On the other hand, if you check the boxes, it will turn on comments, and pingbacks & trackbacks for your post.
WordPress lets you turn on or off comments for an individual post.
So, Open your WordPress Editor>>Settings>>Discussion>>Check or Leave unchecked the Comments box. Once you’ve chosen your option, click Save draft to make changes effective.
Comments Settings Configuration
WordPress allows you to configure comment settings for the entire site. Once you set up this configuration, it will affect the whole site. It has multiple sections to configure several settings for comments users including notifications, users’ names & emails, closing threshold time, threaded levels, etc.
So, set up this configuration before you start to moderate comments appearing on your site.
You can set up comments configuration under Settings>>Discussion from within your WP-Admin panel.
Default Post Settings
On the Discussion Settings, the first configuration you have to make is on Default Post Settings. It has three boxes that you can check or uncheck for certain functions. The first box lets your blog notify other blogs when you link to them in an article or post.
The second option lets other blogs notify your article when they link to your article as pingbacks and trackbacks.
Similarly checking the third option lets other bloggers and readers post new comments on your post. I recommend only checking the third and the first box, or only the third box. Leave the second option unchecked, otherwise, it may generate a lot of spam comments having negative effects on your site and SEO.
Enabling the first option may cause a slowdown to your site. That’s why don’t check it.
Other Comment Settings
The other comment settings is the next section in the comment configuration page that contains more than six options. Checking the first option is recommended, which allows a user to enter his name and email in the comment form.
I recommend unchecking the second check box which if checked, the user can’t post comments unless he gets registered and logs in to his account.
Don’t make threaded comments of more than five levels, as it creates difficulties for users when they want to read the nested comments one by one.
You must configure these other settings options to moderate comments on your site properly.
Comment Moderation Settings
This section allows comments to undergo moderation on account of posting comments with unsolicited hyperlinks. So, check the box labeled as ‘A comment is held for moderation.
Also, check the third and fourth options. Once you enable these options, your system will not approve the posted comments on autopilot, rather you have to approve them manually. Checking these two boxes is of crucial importance if you want to moderate comments and hold them for containing unwanted hyperlinks.
Avatar Settings on WordPress Comment System
The last section on your comment settings page allows you to choose Avatar display and settings. It has multiple options to show Gravatars. These are certain images that appear next to the comment author’s name.
Check the box ‘Show Avatars’ to enable it to comment author’s image. WordPress uses Mystery Person as the default Avatar if the comment author does not set up a custom logo or image for his user profile. This is a generic logo displaying for all comment authors if they do have not their own images.
You must configure comment settings for your entire site to moderate comments. Once you have configured these setting options properly, the comment system will start working on autopilot and minimize spam, unwanted links, and black hat tactics used by some dark web users.
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About The Author
Safiqul Islam
Safiqul Islam is a full-time blogger, writes on WordPress, web hosting, domain, guides, SEO and tutorials. I love to share my experience with the rest of the world. My mission is to teach my blogging expertise, startup guides and lessons to the next generation of online undertakers so as to grow their brand, business and influence.