WordPress discussion settings overview

This tutorial will show you how to manage the WordPress comments settings.

The comments settings could be accessed through the WordPress admin panel (your domain name/wp-admin). When you are in the admin panel go to Settings>Discussion.

Default Article Settings

The settings are default for new posts or pages. However you can always modify them individually for each post or page.

1st Option. Determines if your blog will send out pings and trackbacks to other blogs when you publish your content.

2nd Option. Determines if your WordPress blog will accept pings and trackbacks from other blogs.

3rd Option. Sets if comments are enabled for posts and pages or disabled by default.

Note: You can enable comments for pages and posts individually from the post/page editing page (admin panel>Posts / admin panel>Pages)

Other Comment Settings

1. Comment author must fill out name and e-mail – If the setting is enabled, your blog visitors leaving a comment will be forced to leave a name and a valid email address. Otherwise your visitors can leave anonymous comments.
2. Users must be registered and logged in to comment – If checked, only logged in users can leave comments. Otherwise any visitor can leave a comment.
3. Automatically close comments on articles older than __ days – This setting is used to have comments closed on posts or pages that are older than specificed number of days.
4. Enable threaded (nested) comments __ levels deep – Enable this option to allow visitors to reply to other comments inline/nested. When turned on it can allow for better discussions and responses.

 

Note: Enabling the setting only applies to new comments since existing comments don’t have any threading date. However, disabling this setting applies to all comments.

 

5. Break comments into pages with __ comments per page and the __ last page displayed by default – If your posts/pages get a lot of comments, you may want to split the comments into pages. You can choose how many top level comments to show for each comments page. You can also choose which page to show by default when a visitor first views the comments.
6. Comments should be displayed with the __ comments at the top of each page –  This setting allows you to display comments in ascending or descending order.

E-mail Me Whenever

These options control when you get notified about new comments.

1st Option. Check if you want the author of the post to be notified each time a comment is posted

2nd Option. If enabled anytime a comment is held in the moderation queue, a notification will be sent to website owner email.

Before A Comment Appears

1st Option. If checked, all comments will go into moderation and they will need to be approved by an administrator before appearing on the blog.

2nd Option. If checked, any visitors that have had a comment approved on the blog in the past will get a free pass through approval and only comments from new visitors will go into moderation.

Comment Moderation

1. Hold a comment in the queue if it contains __ or more links – Set the amout of links that comments can contain. If the comment contains links more than set above it would be marked as spam. If you set this to 0, all comments will be held in moderation.
2. When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be held in the moderation queue.

Comment Blacklist

Comment Blacklist is very similar to the Comment Moderation list, but when something matches here, the comment is marked as spam instead of held for moderation.

Avatars

An avatar is an image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on avatar enabled sites. Here you can enable the display of avatars for people who comment on your site.