15 WordPress 101 Managing Comments Video Lecture | WORDPRESS Premium- Tools and Tips - IT & Software

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hello and welcome to this my theme shot
video screencast in today's video I'm
gonna be showing you how to manage
comments on your WordPress site now
comments are a really important part of
any blog because they allow your readers
to communicate with you the author and
create a real conversation so you're
gonna see on your WordPress dashboard
that you can see at a glance how many
posts comments pages and comments in
moderation you have so I'm just gonna
walk you through all of these different
things and we can do that mainly from
the comments dashboard so if we click on
comments on the left hand side here
you're gonna be able to see every single
comment that has been left on your site
and on what post or page those comments
have been left on so if we scroll down
here we can see all of the comments I've
that have been left on my site here now
the basics of comment moderation
includes things such as approving
replying quick edit and spam and trash
so I'm just going to show you what these
do if a comment requires moderation it's
going to have this line across the
left-hand side and also have a different
color background you're then going to
need to approve it before it shows up on
your site you can also unapprove any
comment you also have the option to edit
any of the content of the comment which
you might want to do in line with
current moderation policy and you can
also mark comments as spam or trash now
spam marking as spam will remove the
comment and well it will also train
WordPress to try and filter out any
comments similar to this one in the
future trashing however will just delete
the comment outright so if we click just
spam and that's going to move the
comment to spam you can see now I have
two comments as spam if I'd done that by
accident I can click undo or I can head
to the spam where I'm going to find all
the comments that have being marked as
spam and I can either tell WordPress
that this is not spam or delete
permanently and we can see here this is
the comment from Matt Mullenweg
the founder of WordPress and so this has
actually been mistakenly put here so I
can mark it as not spam if we head to
the next tab here which is pending then
we can see at a glance all of the
comments that need my approval now I can
bulk approve these by just ticking
here at the very top you can see I have
some bolt actions I can either approve
Marcos spam or move to trash so I'm
going to bulk approve these and just
click apply and that's all done now if I
just head back to all then another thing
that you can do from this section of the
dashboard is reply to comments without
leaving the dashboard to do say you just
need to click reply and that's going to
load up a text box which you can fill in
as well as use the usual styling options
so here for example I could leave a
comment saying great info thanks for
sharing smiley face and if I just click
reply then that's going to show up in
line on the website so if I just click
on that we're gonna see that I've got
this comment nestled three down and
we're going to see what that looks like
there if we just head back to the
dashboard then that kind of really
covers the main things about moderating
comments here there are a couple of
extra options available you go to
settings and then click on discussion
then here you're gonna find your
discussion settings now here you can
choose whether to do things such as
attempt to notify any blogs a link to
from the article these are things known
as pingbacks and Trackbacks
you can also choose whether to allow
these on your blog by default WordPress
is going to turn those off you also have
the option to allow people to post
comments on new articles but you can
override this for individual articles
you also have the option to make sure
your comment authors fill out a name and
an email or you can ask their registered
and logged in to comment you can
automatically close comments on articles
older than a certain number of days say
older than 14 days for example and you
can allow replies and choose how many
levels the replies should go to so quite
a fall that set the five you might like
to keep things a little bit neater and
set that to two for example you can
choose whether to break comments in two
pages of 50 so you can either change
that number or turn that off so let's
choose whether the newer or older
comments are left at the top of the page
you can ask for an email notification if
anyone posts the comment or a comment is
held for moderation
and you can also choose that a comment
must be manually approved before it
appears or a comment author must have a
previously approved comment so that
would cut down on your work for a little
bit you can also choose whether to hold
the comment in moderation if it contains
a certain number of links or if it
matches any words that you've put in
this box you also have blacklist so you
can put words in this box one per line
and if it matches any of these then it's
going to send the comments straight to
spam can also choose whether to display
avatars and what rating the avatars must
have as well as a default avatar if you
haven't got an avatar then you can set
your own by going to gravatar.com
and setting your own one and you'll want
to click Save Changes once those are
done and you also have options on any
individual posts and if we just click on
a post here and let's just choose one
that's got some comments on it so we can
see here the comment count for each
individual post so this post has four
comments on it so I can click here and
if I scroll down and past the bottom of
the post I'm gonna see all of the
comments that are in the post displayed
here and here I can approve unapprove
and reply and quick edit and so on as
you could before as well as add my own
comment if I'd like to all from the
admin screen if you scroll right back up
to the top and click on screen options
you can also tick the discussion box
here this will allow you to turn off
comments or pingbacks
so I'm ticking this box is going to turn
off comments for this specific post so
if I just click update and view the post
then we're gonna see that and at the
bottom of the post we've got those
comments that were left but no further
comments can be left on the post that's
a great way of turning off comments if
you need to for any particular spam
reasons for example and that's really
all there is to it comments are an
integral part of any blog and getting
two groups of them is really going to
help you out I hope this video has been
helpful and thank you very much for
watching
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