Category: WordPress • Est. reading time: 2 minutes
Settings > Discussion is where you decide how comments work on your site, and just as importantly, how you keep spam from taking over. If you have ever seen a website buried under fake comments hawking sketchy pills, it is because nobody set this screen up. Let us make sure that is not you.
Default Post Settings
These three apply to every new post: notify blogs you link to, allow pingbacks and trackbacks from other blogs (a common spam vector many people turn off), and the master switch to allow people to submit comments at all.
Other Comment Settings
Your spam-control toolkit. Require a name and email, require registration, auto-close comments after a set number of days, show a cookie opt-in, enable threaded replies, break long threads into pages, and choose the display order.
Moderation and Disallowed Keys
Decide what goes live automatically: hold every comment, or wave through people with a previously approved comment. Comment Moderation holds anything with too many links, and Disallowed Comment Keys (once called the “Comment Blacklist,” renamed in version 5.5) sends comments with certain words, emails, or IPs straight to trash.
Avatars
Turn commenter profile images on or off, set a maximum content rating, and pick a default image.
Our recommendation for business sites: require a name and email, hold the first comment from each person, and cap moderation at a link or two. Prefer no comments at all? See our guides on disallowing and mass-deleting comments.
Want a Hand With This?
Comment spam is easy to prevent once you know the switches. Learn it in our live classes at allydrez.com/learn-how-to-use-wordpress, or reach us at support@allydrez.com or 1-321-209-2004.