Are you interested in moderating comments on your WordPress website but unsure how to begin? 

Built-in to WordPress is a comment system that enables community discussion around your content. 

This beginner’s article will demonstrate how to regulate comments in WordPress, deal with comment spam, and handle any other comment-related issues. 

What Are WordPress Comments? 

Your website’s visitors may engage with you and other readers via comments. They may comment on your written piece, ask questions, and give feedback. 

On most WordPress websites, anybody with a valid name and email address may post a comment without verifying their identity. 

By default, commenting is enabled. A comment form will be shown at the bottom of every blog post and page, although its appearance may vary or not appear at all, depending on the WordPress theme you use. 

Once a user posts a remark, they will receive a preview of their comment and a notification that it is pending moderation. 

Before the remark is shown to other users, it will be stored for your approval or deletion. This enables you to manage the content of your website. 

Consequently, let’s examine how to manage website comments. 

Comment Moderation in WordPress 

You may see all comments on your WordPress website by selecting ‘Comments’ from the dashboard menu. 

The comments page has five separate tabs: all comments, my, pending, approved, spam, and trash. Comments requiring your approval will be shown under the Pending tab. 

To approve a remark, hover the mouse pointer over the comment, and action links will display below it. Click the ‘Approve’ button to remark your website visible to the public. 

You can also respond to a remark by clicking the link labeled “Reply.” Replying to a remark accepts the comment automatically. 

If you see a remark that appears or feels spam, you may designate it as Spam. You may be curious what a spam comment looks like. 

Well, several factors may be used to determine if a remark is a spam: 

Comments containing a lot of keywords, links, and unusual characters 

This is the most blatant kind of comment spam. The comments may also include objectionable stuff. 

Fake Name in a Comment 

If you notice a remark from a user with a name like “Best Mortgage Rates” or “Cheap Printer Ink,” it’s obvious that they’re attempting to spam your site for a backlink. 

Generic Remarks  

Spammers often use generic comments to circumvent your spam filter. These comments are “Thank You,” “Great Article,” or the subject of your article followed by a generic sentence. 

Turn off comments on certain posts in WordPress 

Occasionally, you do not want to permit comments on specific posts. WordPress enables you to disable comments for individual posts and pages. 

Edit a post and open the ‘Discussion’ box from the options menu on the right side of the WordPress editor screen. Next, you may uncheck the box labeled “Allow comments.” 

From your WordPress dashboard, you can also access Posts » All Posts and click the “Quick Edit” option for any blog post. Uncheck the ‘Allow Comments’ box after that. 

WordPress should let blog users control comments. 

It might not be easy to regulate all WordPress comments if you have several posts and get numerous comments daily. 

Having a dedicated comment moderator on your site is a simple solution to this problem. You may designate a different comment moderator status to an active site commenter or your customer care staff member. 

WordPress does not provide a user role devoted to comment moderation. However, the Comment Moderation Role plugin may be used. 

The plugin was developed by our team at WPBeginner, enabling you to restrict WordPress users to the comment moderation panel. The position may be assigned to both current and new users. 

Comment Configuration Settings 

Finally, WordPress lets you modify the setup of comments for the whole website. 

The settings page for comments may be found under Settings » Discussion. There are several parts on the discussion settings page, and we will guide you through each. 

Default post settings 

The discussion settings screen’s top area manages the default post settings. 

This section’s first option enables your blog to inform other bloggers when you link to them in an article. The second option enables your site to accept similar alerts from other blogs. 

These are pingbacks and trackbacks, and we suggest you deactivate both. The first option may slow down your whole website, but the second might result in many spam comments. 

“Allow people to make comments on new posts” is the third option on the article settings page, allowing comments for all new articles you produce on your WordPress site. Remember that you may enable or disable comments for particular articles, as shown in this post. 

Before a remark is shown, please send me an email. 

The following section enables you to get email notifications whenever a user makes a comment on your website or while a remark is awaiting moderation. This option is only appealing during the first days of your website’s existence. The more comments you get, the more unpleasant these emails become. Therefore we suggest turning them off. 

Under ‘Before a remark appears,’ the first option is to approve each comment personally. Check this box to prevent comments from appearing on your site without your permission. 

Below that is ‘Comment author must have a prior approved comment.’ 

If this option is enabled, comments from writers who have already had a comment approved will show without further review. Uncheck this box to ensure that all comments must be manually reviewed. 

Comment Moderation Configurations 

A frequent characteristic of automated spam comments is the presence of several links. Since you have already configured your comments to be manually vetted, all of your comments, regardless of how many links they include, will be sent to the moderation queue. 

You will see a wider text field in which you may input keywords, IP and email addresses, and URLs to monitor. Any comment matching the criteria you provide will be forwarded to moderation. 

You do not need to add anything since you have already configured all comments to be manually vetted, and they will all be sent to the moderation queue anyway.