Comments

Having comments on websites goes back to the early days of blogging and many sites enable user comments without considering their purpose and value. We suggest thinking carefully about why you would want to enable commenting on your site and how you will manage comments.

How to Enable Commenting

To enable commenting on posts and pages, go to Settings > Discussion and check the box "Allow people to post comments on new articles."

If you want the author of a post to be notified when a comment is submitted, check the box for "Email me whenever anyone posts a comment." The other settings determine how comments are handled, who may post them, when they're closed, etc., so consider the right way to manage this for your site.

Protection from Spam

It's strongly suggested that you also check "Comment must be manually approved" before a comment appears on your site to limit spam. We also recommend installing and activating the Akismet plugin for spam detection and filtering.

Removing Comment Boxes on Posts and Pages

Once you enable comments on all new posts, you can easily disable them for any given post by editing the post and de-selecting "Allow comments" in the Discussion field:

If you don't see the Discussion field while editing a post, in the upper-right click on Screen Options and make sure "Discussion" is checked under "Boxes."

If you want to remove the comment box from all posts:

• Go to Posts -> All Posts and select all posts by checking the box next to the Title column label.
• In the Bulk Actions dropdown select Edit, then hit the Apply button.
• In the right column find the Comments dropdown, and select "Do not allow"
• Hit the Update button and the comment box will be removed from all posts.

If you want to remove the comment box for all of your own posts but leave it there for posts by other authors, in the All Posts screen click on your name in the Author column. This will filter to just posts authored by you. Then you can do the Bulk Actions thing above for just your posts.

If you want to disable comments for all future posts, go to Settings > Discussion and in "Default article settings" uncheck the "Allow people to post comments on new articles" box. If you don't do this, future posts will have the comment box unless you uncheck "Allow comments" in the post itself.

Approving and Moderating Comments

You can find all comments submitted, regardless of their status, in the Comments screen:

You can manage each comment (approve, un-approve, edit, reply, mark as spam, or trash), and perform Bulk Actions on any number of comment. Notice the menu at the top of Comments screen has a link for Pending comments, a quick way to see all comments not yet approved:

If you set up email notifications, authors will be notified when comments are submitted to their posts. If the Pending comments queue piles up, an Administrator can quickly see them and respond as appropriate.

Disqus

An alternative to the default WordPress commenting system is Disqus. It is a third-party commenting system with excellent spam filtering and it integrates with the WordPress commenting moderation tools.

To get started with Disqus, you'll need to set up an administrative account on the Disqus platform and download and activate the Disqus plugin. There's also a Disqus Recent Comments widget that can be placed in a sidebar to call attention to posts that are actively being commented on by site users.

For more information, check out Disqus' documentation and help system.

NOTE: The downside to Disqus is that it will include ads with your comments which can reduce engagement. If you decide to use Disqus, we recommend signing up for a paid account as to avoid any unwanted advertising and sponsored comments.