[s3video s3url=”moderating-comments.mp4″ width=”800″ height=”480″ /]
Comments are one of the best reasons to use WordPress as your website platform. The ability for your visitors to leave comments and interact with you, is what will help you begin to build up a relationship with them (and what will ultimately lead to more sales!).
You can find your comments overview page by clicking on Comments in your left navigation, and from this page, you’ll see a list of any comments that have been left on your posts. You can also moderate them from this page. You can approve, unapprove, edit, trash, or spam each comment.
You can change the settings for your comments by going to Settings > Discussion in your left navigation, and this is where you can adjust various settings (such as how you want your comments displayed).
Once your website begins to gain some traction, you are going to find yourself getting spam comments. This is unfortunately just a fact of blog life, but you can take steps to reduce the amount that gets through. One of the two plugins that will come pre-installed with your WordPress software, is a plugin called Akismet.
Even though it comes installed with WordPress, you’ll still need to take a few steps to get it running on your new site:
- Activate the plugin by clicking “activate” just below its name in the plugin list.
- Get your API Key, by clicking the link that appears in the plugin’s description (this will take you to the Akismet website).
- Click the big blue button in the center of the page that says “Get an Akismet API Key.”
- Sign up or sign in to your WordPress.com account.
- Choose if you would like to donate to the plugin or not, and click “sign up.”
- Copy the key that’s given to you, and bring it back over to your WordPress site. Go to Plugins > Akismet Configuration.
- Enter your key, and then click “update options.”
You’re done!