What is Comments?

Comments are the lifeblood of many WordPress websites. Comments are messages left by visitors to your website. Comments can be a visitor’s opinion about the content on your site, communication with other users, to ask questions, or to provide feedback. In short, comments are what separates an isolated website into a thriving community.

WordPress comes built-in with a very robust comment management system. Comments can be written in response to both pages and posts, and just about every theme available is designed to showcase and display comments. But it is up to the website administrator and its authors to encourage and respond to comments.

When you log into your WordPress administration area, you’ll see comments displayed at the top part of the screen. Depending on your comments settings, you can take various actions such as deleting, responding to, or approving a comment. You can also preview comments that have been classified as either spam or trash (deleted).

When you first install WordPress, it is important that you set up the comments section to suit your website’s needs. Click on “Settings” from the administration screen and then “Discussion.” You can then choose whether to accept comments or not.

If you do want to allow comments, you can set up rules about which comments can be published automatically and which ones need to be approved before being published on your site. You can also set a list of words, email addresses, URLs, and/or IP Addresses that you want banned from your comment section.

Note: You can also restrict the ability to leave comments to registered users only. To do so, click on “Settings” from the administration site and then on “General,” being sure to activate “Anyone can register” next to “Membership.” Then, from the “Discussion” settings, you need to activate “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.”

You can also override the default settings for comments for each individual post or page by clicking on “Screen options” at the top of the screen and then “Discussion.”