Have you ever opened your blog and found a comment full of shady links? That is exactly the problem comment moderation solves.
Comment moderation is the process of reviewing the comments people leave on your site. You decide which ones to approve, which to mark as spam and which to send to the trash. It keeps your discussions useful and protects your readers.
How does comment moderation work in WordPress?
When someone leaves a comment, WordPress either publishes it or holds it in a moderation queue, based on your settings. Held comments wait in the Pending list under Comments in the dashboard.
By default, a comment is held unless its author already has a previously approved comment. WordPress also holds comments that contain two or more links, because spammers love links.
How to set up comment moderation
- First, go to Settings → Discussion.
- Now, under Before a comment appears, tick Comment must be manually approved if you want to check every single comment.
- Next, in the Comment Moderation box, set how many links will hold a comment and add any words you want to watch.
- Here, add words to Disallowed Comment Keys to send matching comments straight to the trash.
- Finally, click Save Changes.
The standard WordPress download includes the Akismet plugin, but it is not active by default. Activating an anti-spam plugin like Akismet saves you a ton of manual work.
Moderating comments from the Comments screen
Hover over any comment to see quick actions like Approve, Reply, Quick Edit, Spam and Trash. You can also select many comments at once and use Bulk actions to clear the queue in one go.
I usually check the pending queue once a day, just like checking the mailbox. For a full walkthrough of these options, see our lesson on WordPress discussion settings. If spam is getting out of hand, our list of the best comment plugins for WordPress can help.
Good moderation keeps your comment section clean and friendly. That's all about comment moderation. Tell us in the comment box below how you deal with spam on your site.