What are Comments in WordPress?
A blog comment is a written reaction that readers can add to your blog post. Whereas the main content of the blogs is yours, the comment section allows for reader involvement and communication with you as well as other followers who read your blog.
Comments usually appear on your site underneath the blog content and include information such as the commenter’s name, date, and time they left the comment.
By leaving a comment, readers can let you know what they think about your post, ask questions, or start a discussion. Comments can also help promote your blog by drawing attention from other readers.
In order to encourage comments on your blog, make sure to respond to any comments that are left.
Understanding the Comments Screen in WordPress
The Comments screen enables you to manage all comments left on your site. This includes managing approved, spam, and unapproved comments.
The comments area is divided into several tabs:
- All: This tab shows all comments made on your blog posts, including those awaiting moderation.
- Approved: Only comments that you have approved are shown in this tab.
- Pending: This tab contains comments that are awaiting moderation. These are comments that have been held for moderation because they contain certain words that you marked as spam or because you have not approved the comment author.
- Spam: Comments that have been marked as spam by either you or Akismet are displayed in this tab.
- Trash: Comments that you have deleted are moved to the trash. From here, you can delete comments permanently or restore them back to the main comments area.
Comment Meta-data
In addition to the actual comment text, some meta-data is associated with each comment.
This meta-data includes the following:
- Commenter Name: This is the name of the person who made a comment.
- Email Address: The email address entered by the commenter.
- URL: The URL that the commenter entered.
- IP Address: The IP address of the commenter.
- Date and Time: The date and time that the comment was made.
- User Agent: The browser or user agent used by the commenter.
- Referrer: The URL of the page that led the commenter to your site.
What are Discussion Settings in WordPress?
Discussion settings determine how comments are handled on a WordPress site. These settings can be found in the Comments section of the WordPress Dashboard.
The most important setting is the Default article setting, which determines whether comments are automatically allowed on new articles or not.
Other settings include whether to allow nested comments, comment threads, comment voting, and comment editing. Discussion settings also determine how comment notifications are handled.
By default, WordPress will notify the author of an article when a new comment is made. However, it is also possible to notify all commenters or no one at all.
The discussion settings can be customized to fit the needs of any WordPress site.
What Is Comment Moderation?
As the owner of a WordPress site, it is up to you to moderate comments. This means you need to approve or delete any comments made on your blog posts.
While you can choose to approve all comments automatically, it is generally recommended that you manually approve each comment to ensure that spam comments are not posted on your site.
If you have a lot of comments, it can be time-consuming to moderate them all manually. To help with this, WordPress has a built-in feature called comment moderation.
This feature allows you to approve comments made by certain commenters automatically. For example, you can choose to automatically approve all comments made by commenters who have been previously approved.
- To use comment moderation, go to the Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the Comment Moderation section. In this section, you need to enter the number of days in which a comment must be held for moderation. For example, if you enter 7, then all comments made within the past seven days will be held for moderation.
- You can also choose to approve comments made by certain commenters automatically. To do this, scroll down to the Comment Whitelist section and enter the names or email addresses of the commenters you want to whitelist.
What Is a Comment Blacklist in WordPress?
The Comment Blacklist feature in WordPress allows you to mark certain words or phrases as spam automatically. When a comment contains any of the words or phrases on your blacklist, it will be automatically marked as spam and held for moderation.
To add words or phrases to your blacklist, go to the Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the Comment Blacklist section. Then, enter the words or phrases you want to blacklist in the box below.
You can also choose to automatically blacklist certain words or phrases that are commonly used in spam comments. To do this, scroll down to the Automatically Blacklist Certain Words section and check the box next to the words or phrases you want to blacklist.
Save your changes, and you will see a message saying, “Changes saved.”
What Is Threading in WordPress?
Threading is a feature in WordPress that allows you to display comments in a threaded or nested format. This means that replies to a comment are indented below the original.
Threading makes it easy to follow a conversation, as you can see who is replying to whom.
To enable threading, go to the Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the Other Comment Settings section. In this section, you need to check the box next to “Enable threaded (nested) comments.”
You can also choose how many levels of nesting you want to allow. The default is five levels, but you can change this to any number you want.
Save your changes, and you will see a message saying, “Changes saved.”
How to Only Allow Registered Users to Comment on WordPress
By default, WordPress allows anyone to leave a comment on your site. However, there are a few steps you can take to change that.
First, head to the Settings » Discussion page in your WordPress admin area. On this page, you will see an option that says, ‘Allow people to post comments on new articles.’
You can uncheck this box to disable comments completely. Alternatively, you can keep this option checked and use the other settings on this page to control who can comment on your site.
For example, you can choose to require approval for all comments or only allow registered users to comment. These settings can be helpful if you want to encourage user interaction on your site while also keeping spam comments under control.
How to Receive Email Notifications for WordPress Comments
If you want to be notified by email whenever someone leaves a comment on your WordPress site, there are a few different ways you can do this.
One way is to go to the Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the Comment Notifications section. In this section, you need to enter the email address where you want to receive notifications.
How to Enable/Disable Comments on a Post in WordPress
If you want to enable or disable comments on a post, you can do this from the post editor screen.
Simply edit the post you want to change and scroll down to the Discussion meta box. Here, you will see an option that says, “Allow comments.”
Checking this box will enable comments on that particular post. If you uncheck the box, comments will be disabled. Note that this setting only applies to the post you’re currently editing and will not affect other posts on your site.
What Is an Avatar or Gravatar in WordPress?
An avatar is an image that represents a user in a virtual world or online community. For example, in WordPress, avatars are used to represent users in comments and on the gravatar.com website.
A Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site, appearing beside your name when you do things like comment on blogs or sign up for websites.
Gravatars help identify your posts and comments on blogs and websites. If you don’t have a gravatar, your image will be the default one for that particular website or blog.
You can sign up for a free gravatar account at gravatar.com. Once you have an account, you can add images to represent yourself on any website or blog that supports Gravatars.