Discussion Settings

Video Transcript

In this class, we’re going to tackle the Discussion panel within our Settings section. This is where we can control the settings concerning incoming and outgoing comments, pingbacks, trackbacks, email notifications, and the use of avatars. So let’s go ahead and get started here.

Now these first three items are your default settings that can be overridden on a post-by-post basis, which I’ll show here in just a second. So if you have linked to other blogs in your post and you want to try and notify them of that link as a kind of remote comment from you to them, then you want to check this first box.

The second box here is if other blogs have done the same to you and you want to allow them to let you know they have linked to your site within their blogs, then you want to check this second box. Now of course, this means that they would have to do the same with this second box on their post for you to successfully attempt to notify them, which is what we’re talking about here in this first box. Hopefully, that made sense. And this box here needs to be checked by default if you want to allow your site visitors to leave comments. Now remember, these are all default settings.

So let’s head over to the post editor so I can show you how to override them whenever you want to. Now of course, you can have all of these unchecked as your default setting. And then within your post editor, let’s do that now. Go to Add New Post. You can also do the same thing up here. And in the Screen Options tab up here on the top-right, if you open that up, you want to make sure that the box titled Discussion is checked. Otherwise, these guys aren’t going to show up down here below the editor window.

Let’s head back over to the Settings real quick here under Discussion. I’ll open that up in a new tab. As you can see, since these are checked by default, these are checked as well. If you have the default settings for these as unchecked or not allowing – come on down here and click on Save – then if we refresh this, you’ll see that these are by default unchecked. So this is where you would go to overwrite the default settings you had set up in the Discussions panel of your Settings section. Just make sure that up here, the Screen options is open, the Discussion box is checked. Otherwise, you’re not going to show up down here below the Editor window. Let’s head on back over to our Discussion panel. And we’re going to go ahead and leave these guys checked here for our default settings.

Now if you want to learn more about pingbacks and trackbacks, then you can head on over here to make.wordpress.org/support/user-manual/building-your-wordpress-community/trackbacks-and-pingbacks. And this is going to tell you pretty much everything you need to know about trackbacks and pingbacks.

Now one thing you need to know is that whenever you allow comments, you’re also showing the door to all the comment spammers out there. Whether or not they get through that door, that’s pretty much up to you and your site. There are plugins that you can install and activate that will help prevent comment spam, trackback and pingback spam as well. One of those plugins comes installed by default with all of your WordPress installs. That’s Akismet. Now Akismet is free so long as your site has no commercial intent – in other words, you’re not trying to make any money off your WordPress site, whether it’s through AdSense or selling stuff on your site. If you are, then Akismet is no longer free. Technically speaking, it’s going to cost you money. Now there are other plugins out there. And if we head over to wordpress.org/plugins/tag/comment-spam, this will show you a lot of the different anti-spam plugins that can be found in the WordPress plugin repository. And one of the better ones, in my opinion, is this one right here in the top-left corner, WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam. One thing I want to point out here is that this was last updated 17 hours ago. And if we scroll down and we get to Akismet, this was last updated 2 months ago. Yeah, there’s a lot more installations. That’s because it comes as a default installation with every single WordPress install. So this number here is a bit skewed if you ask me. So if your blog or WordPress site is simply for personal purposes, Akismet will work just fine. Otherwise, you might want to consider WP-SpamShield. Okay, so that’s that.

Moving on, other comment settings where you can require the comment author to fill out their name and email, which is a good thing, as well as other items that determine how the comments can be displayed on your site. And in this section here, you can toggle on or off these options where you will be emailed when anybody posts a comment or if a comment is held for moderation. And by the way, that email they’re going to send those to is that email address that you would set up earlier that I keep harping on needs to be an email address that you monitor on a regular basis, one more reason why you’ve got to put a good email address in there.

And you can also make it to where each comment has to be manually approved or is automatically approved. Now these next two boxes are pretty important as well. This one will help you weed out possible spam if the comment contains a certain number of links. And you can adjust that with the up-down arrow here. Or if the comment contains certain words or IP addresses – and be aware that the words you would put into this box here may also match other words, so be careful of that – this will automatically trigger that comment to be held for moderation, no matter what you have set up here.

Now taking this a step further, in the comment blacklist box, similar to the trigger words you can put in here, if you put those words in here or names or URLs or even email addresses, these trigger words will send that comment automatically to spam. No moderation whatsoever. You won’t even know about it. And lastly, you can choose to display avatars next to the comments of the people that left that comment. You can also allow or disallow avatar images based on a rating system and even display a particular default avatar if the commenter does not have one associated with their email address. And as always, don’t forget to press the Save Changes button if you made any changes here.

And that’s the end of this video on a review of the Discussions panel of the Settings section of a WordPress Admin page. Thanks for watching and you have a great day.