Every month, WordPress.com users leave 77 million new comments on new posts.
Yes, you read that right — 77 million.
That’s a lot of engagement, conversation, and community-building. But while the comment section can help you connect with your audience, it comes with a lot of responsibility, particularly in terms of moderating comments and keeping things civil.
Bloggers who practice good WordPress comment moderation can really witness their readership grow. But, bloggers who don’t prioritize spam control and who don’t reply to their comments might see less thrilling results, and won’t be able to foster that much-needed sense of community.
So how do you balance fostering meaningful conversations with ensuring that your comments section aligns with your brand’s core values? Here’s how to effectively monitor and manage comments on your site without completely halting the conversation.
What is comment spam?
Spam comments are a bit different from spam emails. You’re less likely to see promises of riches in comments, and are more likely to notice poor grammar and telltale generic phrases. They usually look something like this:
There are some rules of thumb to help you identify spam comments.
- The comment doesn’t reference anything specific about your post.
- The comment is so general that it could apply to just about any blog.
- The comment contains an irrelevant link in an attempt to siphon off traffic.
Why Moderate WordPress Blog Comments
There are many reasons to manage comments on your WordPress blogs.
- First, comment moderation can help you keep the conversation on topic.
- By preventing spam, you can ensure a more positive User Experience (UX). Sketchy comments can hurt readers’ impressions of your brand and make your site seem less trustworthy.
- Managing your comments can also help protect your site against false or negative claims. By controlling which users are allowed to comment and the conditions they must meet in order to do so, you can filter out illegitimate messages that may be made with malicious intent.
- Another important reason to moderate your comments is that spammy content can hurt your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Bots and other actors can include links in their comments. If you have many messages pointing to sites that Google considers low quality or phishy, it can lead to lower rankings.
- For optimal SEO, it’s essential to ensure that Google deems your site as relevant and trustworthy. FIltering out risky or suspicious behavior can help boost your search visibility and prevent your site from being blacklisted or penalized.
The comment section on your website can be an invaluable tool to help you build community and boost your business. But with great power comes great responsibility. Letting others share their opinion on your site can drive engagement, but failing to put any parameters around how people should behave there can go wrong quickly, potentially repelling the visitors you want and keeping them from coming back.
You want your site to be a welcoming, fun place for everyone who visits but when someone consistently violates the rules or posts something that doesn’t align with your brand values, they’ve overstayed their welcome, and it’s best that you show them the way out.
Comment sections are an excellent place to facilitate engagement and healthy conversations. However, it’s important to maintain a certain level of quality around these discussions, which may require you to moderate feedback and criticism.
First Things First
Before you start moderating comments, follow these 2 steps to make the process easier.
1. Create a strategy for your comment section
Today, the internet is the Wild West. Everyone says whatever they want, whenever they want — sans any filter.
You probably don’t want to adopt this same anything-goes approach in your comments section. So you must first decide how to manage comments, including whether you’ll approve or reject comments before they go live.
There are some advantages to approving comments beforehand. You can pre-screen content and remove anything that isn’t on-brand before other users see it. You can catch potentially offensive or inflammatory comments before they spark a discussion you’d rather not have on your site. Pre-approving comments also allows you to spot spam or users who are using your comments section purely for link-building and to draw people from your site to theirs. In short, this approach gives you more control over your site and the conversations that take place within it.
However, there’s a downside to this approach, too. Some users may feel you’re unfairly censoring them or that you’re only filtering out comments that you personally disagree with. You may also be missing an opportunity to spark a lively debate that increases engagement and time spent on your site. Time is another issue. Pre-approving comments could quickly turn into a time suck and draw you away from other activities that could also grow your business.
Weigh all these factors before you decide to pre-approve comments on your site.
2. Create a comments policy
Moderating comments can be tricky to navigate, which is why you should consider establishing a comments policy and posting it on your site so everyone can see it. Your policy can include things like:
- No spam
- No graphic or explicit content
- Be respectful of others — no abusive or offensive language, and no name-calling
Don’t forget to add what will happen if someone violates these rules, such as a three-strikes-you’re-out policy or immediate removal from the site and revoking their user privileges.
A comment policy can also be effective if you decide on an entirely different approach: not moderating comments at all. You may want to test this for a few weeks before you decide to go all in. For example, if you notice your website is overrun with trolls or spam, then it’s probably better to moderate everything on the front end. However, if you notice you’re getting more engagement and that your users follow the community guidelines you’ve established, then keeping the comment section open — at least for the time being — might be the best approach.
Comments Moderation Setup
Akismet is your first line of defense
By default, a plugin called Akismet Anti-Spam is already active on every new WordPress.com website.
Akismet automatically eliminates the vast majority of spam before they even reach your comments section.
There’s even an Akismet widget to help you track the volume of spam comments filtered over the lifespan of your blog.
Adjust Comment Settings
Although Akismet handles much of the heavy lifting, you can take more control by adjusting some of the comment settings.
1. Disable or Enable Comments
One way to manage comment moderation in WordPress blogs is to customize the settings that come built-in with the Content Management System (CMS). To do so, you can navigate to My Sites > Settings > Discussion:
On this screen, you can enable or disable comments under Default Article Settings. However, we don’t recommend disabling them since comments can increase engagement.
This setting is toggled on by default when you create a new WordPress blog. You can go back to change it whenever you want. However, keep in mind that if you decide to disable comments in the future, any comments that were made when the feature was toggled on will remain visible on your posts.
2. Disable Comments for Individual Pages and Posts
If you do decide to add a comments section to your blog, there may still be times when you want to disable the functionality for specific pages or posts. To do this, you can navigate to the discussion settings of that post.
Once you’re on the post, scroll to the bottom of the Settings sidebar and look for the Discussion section. Here, you’ll find the Allow comments option:
If you want to disable comments, you can simply uncheck the box. The process is the same for WordPress pages. When you’re done, remember to save your changes.
3. Limit Comments to Registered Users
Another tactic you can use to manage comment moderation in WordPress is to restrict the functionality to registered users only. This can help minimize the number of comments you have to review and approve.
To do this, you can navigate to My Sites > Settings > Discussion. Under the Comments section, you can toggle the Users must be registered and logged in to comment option:
Now, only users with a WordPress.com account will be able to comment. This can help safeguard your blog against spammers.
4. Enhance Your Comment Section With Jetpack
Aside from the default comment settings that come with WordPress, you can also use a plugin to exercise greater control over your comments. A helpful tool we recommend using is Jetpack.
You can use Jetpack Comments to replace the default WordPress comment form with a system that integrates with social media. This enables users to log into your site using a social media account. Note that these login options won’t work if the browser blocks third-party cookies.
Once you’ve installed and activated Jetpack on your site, you can navigate to Settings > Discussion on your WordPress dashboard. Next, you’ll need to enable the setting for Let readers use WordPress.com, Twitter, Facebook, or Google accounts to comment:
When you enable this feature, the design of the form will depend on your current WordPress theme. Users will then be able to enter their comments in the text field, and they’ll be able to select a login method from the list of options.
On the settings page, you can change the text that appears above the form. By default, it’s set to “Leave a Reply”.
Additionally, you can change the color scheme of the form. The three options you can choose from are Light, Dark, or Transparent.
There are also a handful of settings for your readers. For example, they can choose to save their name, email, and website for the next time they visit your site. Users can also subscribe to comments so that they’re notified via email every time a new comment is submitted. They can also opt in for email notifications for new blog
Manual comment moderation
Although Akismet is a powerful tool, it doesn’t catch everything. Sometimes it’s necessary to manually moderate your comments. You can choose how to go about comment moderation from the My Site screen — just head to Settings > Discussion.
Here, you can decide whether you want to manually approve every comment before it goes live, or if you want to allow comments from visitors who you approve to post. This can save you time, as these will be users that you know aren’t spammers. It’s important to remain vigilant nonetheless, as some people do know how to game the system.
You can also choose to receive email notifications every time a new comment is posted. Commenters won’t have to wait very long for approval, particularly if you’re not in the habit of checking your blog’s dashboard daily.
In addition to approving non-spam comments, respond to as many as you can. This takes a little bit of time, but means a lot to your readers. Ultimately, this can boost fan loyalty and excitement.
Restrict comments on old posts
If your blog takes off and you’re receiving more comments than you can keep up with, don’t worry. You don’t have to spend hours moderating and responding to comments if you don’t want to.
One of the easiest ways to handle this is by closing comments on your older posts or automatically disabling comments on your posts after a set time period.
To turn off comments on older posts, go to your Discussion settings — midway through the list, you will see an option to close comments on posts after a certain number of days pass since publication: just fill in the desired number of days and you’re all set.
Setup, maintain, and grow your following through comments
Like most things on WordPress.com, comment moderation requires an initial setup and a bit of attention here and there to ensure that your blog is a safe place for your audience. Once you master WordPress comment moderation, you’ll be ready for your following to flourish.
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