How to Limit the Links in Comments with WordPress Comment Moderation
The comments section is a very important part of any website. Through it, you can know a lot about your website as well as your website users and visitors. Users can put any of their thoughts in the comments on your website. They might include compliments, suggestions, or even negative reviews on some unfortunate situations. But, with the help of the comment section, you can easily create an even better website for yourself.
Since comments are important for your website, it is very crucial to manage and moderate them as well. However, if you use a WordPress website, it is very easy to carry out WordPress Comment Moderation.
What is WordPress Comment Moderation?
WordPress comment moderation is a process of managing the comments on your WordPress website by limiting the number of links or blacklisting certain words. If a comment contains any of these or exceeds the number of links, you’ll have to approve the comments manually. We will show you how to easily moderate comments on WordPress in this article. But, let’s look at why you need to moderate comments in WordPress first.
Why is WordPress Comment Moderation Important?
We know that the internet is a great platform to grow your website. You can get a lot of help and resources from the internet for your website. Despite that, there might be a lot of unwanted content that can enter your website for a negative impact on it. And one of the major sources for it is the comments section.
These unwanted comments mostly consist of spam which can harm your website directly or indirectly. They can make your website malfunction. The spams also tend to spread widely with just one click and target the users of your website. This can leave a bad impression on your website from the users’ point of view. The comments might also consist of unwanted and unrelated self-promotion of websites and businesses which can be really annoying.
The options available for WordPress comments have been improved drastically for your WordPress website security. Hence, these unwanted comments can be eliminated effortlessly with just a few WordPress comments moderation guidelines. So, you can implement these easy steps to moderate the WordPress comments of your website.
How to Moderate Comments on WordPress?
You can moderate the comments on WordPress with these two simple steps within the WordPress comments settings and section:
Step 1: Set the Limit for Number of Links and Words for Comment Moderation
Everything about the WordPress comments moderation can be done in a single place of your WordPress dashboard. It extensively involves the WordPress comments settings of your website. All you need to do is open Settings>>Discussion from your Dashboard. The Discussion Settings will be presented. You’ll see that the settings for the WordPress comments are spread into six different settings categories.
Go to the Comment Moderation section. You’ll see the option to limit the number of links in a comment. Select the number of links you want your users to add on the comments.
You can also add certain words which might be inappropriate in the comments of your website. These words may include name, URL, email, or even IP address. E.g. the word “themes” will also match “BeatifulThemes“.
Once you’ve made the necessary changes make sure to click on Save Changes which is at the bottom of the web page.
Step 2: Approve or Remove the Comments that Cross the Limit for Moderation
When a user adds more than the limited number of links on a comment, it will automatically be sent to the moderation queue. The same goes for blacklisted words too. The comments in the moderation queue can be approved from the pending comments section of your dashboard.
To view the moderation queue, just click on Comments from your Dashboard. You’ll see the different options of your Comments section. Click on the Pending tab. You’ll see that the comments that have crossed the number of the links will need your approval to be shown on the page. If you think that the comment will do no harm and isn’t spam, select Approve. Or else, you can move it to Spam or Trash.
When the comments are moderated, the users who comment will also be notified about it. So, it will be mentioned that their comment is in a queue and will be visible on the website or the post only after it is approved.
Wrapping Up:
We hope that you can now perform your WordPress comment moderation without any hassle. WordPress comments have come a far way to help you manage what you want to allow your users to comment. For example, you can even allow or not allow them to add images in the comments. However, we will be updating you with more contents on WordPress comments.
In the meantime, be sure to check out our other articles as well if you found this tutorial helpful or interesting:
- How to Embed Google Slides Presentation in WordPress Posts
- An Easy Guide on How to Disable Self Pingbacks in WordPress
- How to Create Affiliate Links on your WordPress Website
