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How to Stop Commenting on Older Posts?

Category: WordPress
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Some site owners don’t want commenting on older posts, for a variety of reasons. Often, it’s because the content is time-sensitive, and it wouldn’t make much sense to revive old news. If you’d like to restrict your posts so that they don’t get comments after a certain number of days, apply the below steps.

If you’d like to restrict the number of days that can elapse before commenting is stopped, simply tick the box within the admin panel,

  Settings -> Discussion -> Other Comment Settings:

To set the number of days, fill in the day count box and tick the enabling tick box:

  Automatically close comments on posts older than ___ days

Untick the box if you’d like visitors to be able to comment at any number of days following a post being published.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Use Cookies to Remember Commenters’ Information?

Once someone has found a good post on your website, engaged with it, and made a comment, chances are they’ll want to comment on other posts, in the same visit. Rather than requiring them to re-enter their name, email and website URL over and over again, you can simply tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

Note: If you’re logged in, this doesn’t work, or didn’t in some versions of WordPress, so don’t be surprised if you test it and find odd behavior, when logged in.

If you’d like to enable cookies to store comment author details, simply tick the box within the admin panel,

  Settings -> Discussion -> Other Comment Settings:

To enable cookie use, tick the box:

  Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set

Untick the box if you’d like to require visitors to have to re-enter their details with each and every comment.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Enable Threaded Commenting?

WordPress comments can be flat, so that comments and responses occur chronologically. If you get 10 commenters and it takes you a few hours to respond, it could be that you have 10 responses below all the comments, not below each one individually. This is why comment nesting was created. With it, as you respond to a comment, and they respond to your response, the conversations are kept together – making conversations much more sensible.

To enable comment threading and set how many levels of nesting are supported, you can set the levels numerically in a dropdown and simply tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Other Comment Settings:

To enable threading, tick the box and pick the number of nested levels of depth:

  Enable threaded (nested) comments ___ levels deep

Untick the box if you’d like to keep comments un-nested, so they posted in one big stream of chronological events, unrelated to the responses associated.

How to Paginate Comments?

If you’re getting a lot of comment activity, waiting for a slew of comments to load can slow down site performance and make a page look like Santa’s list for the entire planet – not visually appealing, at all. To sort this, you can choose to paginate WordPress comments into blocks of X number of comments.

To enable comment pagination, set how many comments per page, and set whether you see the oldest or most recent first, you can set the values and tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Other Comment Settings:

To enable pagination, tick the box and pick the number of comments per page:

  Break comments into pages with __ top level comments per page and the ___ page
  displayed by default

Untick the box if you’d like to keep comments all on one page.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Get Email Notification When Someone Comments?

If you’re not getting tons of comments and would like a nudge as a reminder to go and review or approve comments on your WordPress blog, you can turn on email notification, so you get the alert. Alternatively, if you’re getting loads of these, or login regularly without a prompt, then you may want to turn off this functionality.

To enable email notifications on comment submission, tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Email Me Whenever:

To enable email notifications, tick the box next to:

  Anyone posts a comment

Untick the box if you’d like to avoid all that email coming to your inbox.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Get Email Notification When Comments Await Moderation?

In those instances when people can post comments, and sometimes they get auto-approved and others they don’t, there will be some posts that go into the moderation queue, needing you to review them before approving, deleting or flagging as spam.

To enable email notifications on comments awaiting moderation, tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Email Me Whenever:

To enable email notifications, tick the box next to:

  A comment is held for moderation

Untick the box if you’d like to avoid being reminded when there are some comments being held for approval.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Require All Comments Be Manually Approved?

There are times you’d like to stop any comment from automatically appearing, by turning on manual approval of all WordPress blog comments.

To force all comments to need manual approval, tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Before a Comment Appears:

To require manual comment approval, tick the box next to:

  Comment must be manually approved

Untick the box if you’d like comments to be published without manual intervention each time.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Require Commenting Authors to Have Previously Been Approved?

Stopping spam is painful. In order to get some posts automatically approved, based on the fact that they’ve been previously vetted and approved, you can use one of the options below.

To enable approval of comments by a prior poster, tick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Before a Comment Appears:

To require manual comment approval, tick the box next to:

  Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Untick the box if you don’t want to favor previously approved commenters.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

There’s several built-in tools in WordPress for reducing the amount of comment spam that your site gets. One such method is to limit commenting which has a certain number of links in the body of the comment.

To block comments with at least X number of links in them, set the number of links in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Comment Moderation:

To require manual comment approval based on the number of links, specify the number in:

  Hold a comment in the queue if it contains ___ or more links.

Setting the value to 0 will force all comments to require approval before publishing.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Moderate Comments Based on Commenter Name, Email, URL, IP or Content?

WordPress comments can be moderated (requiring manual approval) based on information submitted in the Name, Email, URL, IP or Content fields of the comment.

To moderate comments with a particular value in any of the fields, set whatever it is you’d like to match against in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Comment Moderation:

To moderate comments based on the fields value, specify the content to match in the box below:

  When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, email, or IP address, 
  it will be held in the moderation queue. One word or IP address per line. It will match inside words, 
  so “press” will match “WordPress”.

Example:

  To moderate posts with “viagra” or “Viagra” or “VIAGRA” in one of the fields, 
  simply put “viagra” in the text box. It’ll also block “Diviagranos” and other strings with “viagra” 
  somewhere inside the name field.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Trash Comments Based on Commenter Name, Email, URL, IP or Content?

WordPress comments can be trashed based on information submitted in the Name, Email, URL, IP or Content fields of the comment.

To trash comments with a particular value in any of the fields, set whatever it is you’d like to match against in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Comment Blocklist:

To trash comments based on the fields value, specify the content to match in the box below:

  When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, email, or IP address, 
  it will be put in the Trash. One word or IP address per line. It will match inside words, 
  so “press” will match “WordPress”.

Example:

  To trash “viagra” or “Viagra” or “VIAGRA” in one of the fields, simply put “viagra” in the text box. 
  It’ll also block “Diviagranos” and other strings with “viagra” somewhere inside the name field.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Automatically Approve WordPress Comments?

While there are a myriad of reasons why someone would force comments to be manually approved, there are some cases where a blog owner might want to have comments automatically approved.

To automatically approve all WordPress comments, untick a couple of options in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Before a Comment Appears:

To allow automatic comment approval, untick BOTH boxes:

  Comment must be manually approved
  Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Instead, tick the box if you’d like comments to be automatically approved.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

How to Allow Anonymous Commenting?

Most WordPress blogs won’t allow anonymous commenting because of the amount of spam abuse that they would receive. However, in the interest of free, open discussion, and to avoid persecution of authors, occasionally anonymous comments make sense.

To allow anonymous WordPress comments, untick an option in the WordPress admin panel, using the below steps.

  Settings -> Discussion -> Other Comment Settings:

To allow anonymous comments, untick the box:

  Comment author must fill out name and email

Instead, tick the box if you’d like comments to require author information before being submitted.

Then scroll down and click Save Changes.

Conclusion

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