With WordPress, your site visitors can leave comments on posts and pages.
Managing Comments in WordPress: The Comments Page
Managing comments in WordPress is quite similar to the way posts and pages are managed.
From the WordPress Dashboard, visit the Comments page. This screen is customizable in the same ways as other WordPress management screens.
A yellow row means the comment is waiting for you to moderate it. You can act on comments using the on-hover action links or the Bulk Actions.
In the Author column, in addition to the author’s name, email address, and blog URL, the commenter’s IP address is shown. Clicking on this link will show you all the comments made from this IP address.
In the Comment column, each comment includes Submitted on information, followed by the date and time the comment was left on your site. Clicking the date/time link will take you to that comment on your live site. Hovering over any comment gives you options to approve, reply (and approve), quick edit, edit, spam mark, or trash that comment.
In the In Response To column, there are three elements. The text is the name of the post that comment is assigned to, and links to the post editor for that entry.
The View Post link leads back to that post on your live site. This small bubble with the number shows the number of approved comments that post has received. If the bubble is gray, you have moderated all comments for that post. If it is blue, there are pending comments. Clicking the bubble will filter the comments screen to show only comments on that post.
Managing Comments in WordPress: Dashboard Home Screen
Another way to manage comments is from the WordPress Dashboard home screen. Here you’ll see recent comments and you can quickly and easily approve, reply, edit, mark as spam or trash by hovering over these links.
WordPress Comment Settings
Don’t forget you can change your Comment or Discussion settings from within the WordPress settings menu. This page allows you to make changes to the details of comments made on your site, plus the ability to blacklist comments to help manage spam comments.
Kristen has been writing tutorials to help WordPress users since 2011. You can usually find her working on new articles for the iThemes blog or developing resources for #WPprosper. Outside of work, Kristen enjoys journaling (she’s written two books!), hiking and camping, cooking, and daily adventures with her family, hoping to live a more present life.
