Post/Blog Comments (In-Depth Guide)

Comments

Visitors to your site can make comments on pages or posts. Comments are a good way to encourage user contributions to your site and help foster a sense of community. Comments may or may not be enabled on your site depending on how it has been developed.

NB: If you are unsure about whether or not comments are enabled, consult with your web developer or IT department.

If comments are enabled then you can view, edit and reply to comments by clicking on the Comments widget in the sidebar. You can also mark comments as spam, approve or unapprove them and delete them.

The Edit Comments screen looks like this:

This screen displays any comments made by visitors on your website. At the top left of the screen your comments are sorted into status and tallied. At the top right is the Search tool. Under the Search tool is the Total number of Comments.

Underneath the tally headings are the familiar Bulk Actions and Filter tools. The filter tool allows you to view comments, pings or both in the table list.

The table of comments displays the Author, that is the actual visitor to your website who made the comment, the comment itself and the post or page the comment was made on.

Placing the mouse over any comment in the list will display a menu of options. The comments menu options are:

·         Approve/Unapprove

·         Reply

·         Quick Edit

·         Edit

·         Spam, and

·         Trash

Approve/Unapprove

If a comment is approved it will be visible to the public on your website. Depending on the nature and/or subject matter of the comment you may want to prevent it from being displayed on the website until further consideration by yourself or a colleague. If you "Unapprove" a comment it will marked as pending. This means the comment remains in the system but is not published on the website until it is approved.

Spam

If a comment is considered spam it may automatically end up in the spam section, depending on how your site has been developed. If you think a comment is spam and it has been approved, or is marked as "pending", you can mark it as "spam" and the system will hold the comment in the spam section until further action. From the spam section you can approve comments to be published or delete them. This works in a similar way to the spam filters in many popular email programs.

Trash

Clicking on the Trash option under any comment will move that comment to the Trash link located above, next to the Spam link.       

Click the Trash link to locate all the items that you have deleted for the past 30 days.

Hover your mouse over to the title of the comment that you want to delete or restore, and a sub-menu of options will appear below.

Choose Restore to recover back your deleted comment or choose Delete Permanently to delete the comment forever.

Edit

The Edit Comment screen looks like this:

This screen allows you to edit the comment, including the author's name, email and URL, as well as the body of the comment. You can also change the status of the comment by using the radio buttons in the right-hand side Status widget.

To save your changes, click on the Update Comment button or click on the Move to Trash link to move the comment to Trash.

Quick Edit

The Quick Edit comment screen looks like this:

This screen allows you to edit the author's name, email and URL as well as the body of the comment from within the comments list table, without loading a whole new page.

Reply

The Reply To Comment screen looks like this:

This screen allows you to reply to any comment on your website. Simply enter your reply in the bottom half of the editor and click on the Reply button or the Cancel button to cancel your reply. Once you submit a reply it will be published on your website for the public to view.