Interacting with your audience through comments is an essential part of running a WordPress site. However, not all comments are created equal. You‘ll inevitably receive spam comments, abrasive remarks, and content irrelevant to your posts.
That‘s where comment moderation comes in. With the proper comment moderation strategy, you can foster constructive discussions and filter out unwanted comments.
In this beginner‘s guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know to effectively moderate comments on your WordPress site, including:
- What is comment moderation and why it‘s important
- Configuring WordPress comment settings
- Using the Thrive Comments plugin for advanced moderation
- Allowing users to moderate comments
- Disabling comments on specific posts
- Leveraging Akismet to detect spam
Contents
What Is Comment Moderation and Why It Matters
Comment moderation gives you control over which comments get published on your site. Instead of every comment appearing automatically, you can review and approve each one before it goes live.
This is useful for several reasons:
It enhances your site‘s user experience. By filtering out spam, self-promotion, and inappropriate language, you ensure your comment section remains constructive and on-topic. This fosters better discussions.
It protects your brand. Offensive or irrelevant remarks can damage your site‘s credibility. Moderating comments prevents your brand‘s reputation from being tarnished.
It improves your search engine optimization (SEO). Spammy comments full of links can negatively impact your search rankings. Moderating comments helps keep "link juice" within your site instead of leaking out.
It boosts security. Malicious comments may contain dangerous links or code. Moderating comments reduces the risk of malware and other threats reaching your users.
Without moderation, your comment section can quickly become overrun with low-quality contributions. But manually reviewing every single comment is tedious.
The good news is WordPress provides built-in tools to automate and simplify comment moderation. Let‘s look at how to configure them.
Configuring WordPress Comment Settings
WordPress lets you moderate comments right from the dashboard. To access the configuration options, go to Settings > Discussion.
Let‘s break down the key settings:
Default Article Settings
Under "Default article settings", you‘ll find options related to:
- Pings – Notify other sites when you link to them. Disable to avoid spam pings.
- Trackbacks – Notify you when other sites link to your content. Disable to avoid spam trackbacks.
- Allow Comments – Let users comment on new posts. Disable if you want to manually enable comments per post.
Other Comment Settings
"Other comment settings" provides additional moderation options:
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Comment author details – Require name and email to comment. Discourages spam.
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Comment editing window – Allow users to edit comments for a set time after posting.
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Comment visibility – Automatically close comments on articles older than a certain number of days.
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Break comments into pages – Split long comment threads into multiple pages to improve performance and readability.
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Newest/Oldest comments first – Choose whether to show newest or oldest comments first on multi-page threads.
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Threaded (nested) comments – Display comment replies indented under their parent for easier following.
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Comments per page – Number of comments to show per page on multi-page threads.
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Notification emails – Notify admin of new comments or comments pending moderation.
Carefully configuring these settings tailors your comment moderation workflow. For example, requiring comment author details prevents anonymous spamming.
Before a Comment Appears
The "Before a comment appears" settings determine your moderation method:
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Comment must be manually approved – Must explicitly approve each comment before it appears publicly. This gives you full control.
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Comment author previously approved – Automatically approve comments from authors you‘ve already vetted. Saves moderation time.
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Maximum links – Hold overly link-heavy comments for review to catch spam.
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Moderation words/phrases – Hold comments containing banned words for review. Prevents harassment and abuse.
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Comment moderation – Automatically send comments with many links or certain keywords to moderation queue. More advanced spam filtering.
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Comment blacklist – Immediately discard comments using banned words. Use carefully to avoid false positives.
Manual approval provides the highest level of control, which is recommended for most sites. The other options just help reduce your workload by automatically flagging potentially unwanted comments.
Notifications and Avatars
Finally, the "Notification" and "Avatars" settings allow you to:
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Receive email notifications when comments are posted or awaiting approval.
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Show comment author avatars from Gravatar or a default image.
Once you‘ve configured your desired moderation workflow, click "Save Changes" at the bottom to apply your new comment settings.
Now let‘s look at managing comments from the front-end of your WordPress site.
Moderating Comments from the Dashboard
To view and moderate comments, click on "Comments" in your WordPress dashboard menu. This displays all comments on your site.
Comments marked as spam will appear in the "Spam" tab. You can select comments and click "Not Spam" to override the spam classification.
Comments you‘ve deleted will reside in the "Trash" tab for 30 days before being permanently removed. Click "Restore" to recover accidentally deleted comments.
To moderate a comment, hover your mouse over it to reveal the action links:
- Approve – Allow comment to appear publicly.
- Reply – Respond directly to the comment.
- Edit – Modify the comment‘s text.
- Spam – Mark as spam to move to Spam tab.
- Trash – Delete the comment. It will appear in Trash tab.
You can also click the downward arrow next to "Bulk Actions" to moderate multiple comments at once.
This covers the basics of managing comments from your dashboard. Let‘s look at how the Thrive Comments plugin can provide advanced moderation capabilities.
Advanced Comment Moderation with Thrive Comments
Thrive Comments replaces the default WordPress comment system with a highly customizable solution.
Some of the key features that can aid moderation include:
In-Depth Comment Moderation
Thrive Comments provides granular control over moderation with options like:
- View all unreplied, pending, or deleted comments
- Filter by comment author or content keywords
- Assign comments to other users to respond to
- Pin great comments so they stay at the top
This level of filtering and delegation helps you handle high volumes of comments efficiently.
Comment Conversion
Comment Conversion lets you redirect users after commenting to a thank you page, related post, etc. This encourages further engagement with your site.
Analytics
Thrive Comments provides helpful moderation analytics, including:
- Activity timeline showing all actions on comments over time
- Filterable reports for specific posts or date ranges
The data assists with monitoring your comment section and shaping your moderation strategy.
Thrive Comments requires a paid subscription, but offers a free trial to test it out. If you manage a high-traffic site, it‘s worth looking into.
Allowing Users to Moderate Comments
On team-managed sites, you may want to allow certain users to moderate comments without full WordPress access.
There are a couple plugins that enable this capability:
Thrive Comments
Under Thrive Dashboard > Thrive Comments > Comment Moderation, you can check roles that should be able to moderate comments.
For example, enable it for Editors but not Authors. You can also exclude comments from moderators.
Comment Moderation Role
This plugin creates a special "Comment Moderator" role. Users assigned this role can moderate comments but not access other areas of the dashboard.
Read our guide on allowing comment moderation for details on using it.
Delegating comment moderation is a great way to distribute the workload and leverage team capabilities.
Disabling Comments on Specific Posts
Sometimes you‘ll want to disable commenting on certain posts, like single-page sites or sensitive announcements.
There are a couple ways to do this in WordPress:
Quick Edit
On the "Posts > All Posts" page, click "Quick Edit" on the post then uncheck "Allow Comments":
Discussion Box
When editing a post, expand the "Discussion" box and uncheck "Allow comments":
Disabling comments on individual posts allows you to moderate more selectively.
Leveraging Akismet to Catch Spam
Akismet is a super helpful WordPress plugin that detects spam comments automatically. Whenever you manually mark comments as spam, Akismet learns to better identify similar comments in the future.
If you end up with a backlog of pending comments, you can click "Check for Spam" on the Comments page to have Akismet scan and detect spam.
Akismet catches over 99% of spam, saving you tons of manual moderation. Just remember to always verify flagged comments, as occasionally genuine comments get incorrectly marked as spam.
Putting It All Together
Moderating WordPress comments doesn‘t have to be a painful chore. With the right settings and tools, you can streamline the process and focus on fostering great discussions.
Here are some best practices to keep in mind:
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Use manual comment approval to maintain full control over your comment section.
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Leverage Akismet to automate spam detection, but verify flagged comments.
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Disable comments on pages that don‘t need them, like Contact and About Us.
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Turn off notifications once you get a lot of comments to avoid email overload.
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Assign user roles like Editor or Comment Moderator to help distribute moderation.
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Encourage engagement with comment conversion pages and by replying to comments.
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Monitor your moderation analytics to detect issues and improve workflows.
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Standardize your moderation process to train team members efficiently.
With a thoughtful moderation strategy, you can facilitate constructive community dialogue and safeguard your brand reputation.
We hope this beginner‘s guide gives you a solid foundation for moderating WordPress comments. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments!
