WordPress comments allow visitors to leave feedback, ask questions, and interact with your content. While comments can be a great way to build engagement, they also need to be managed to keep your site professional and free of spam. In this guide, we'll show you how to moderate, configure, and manage comments on your WordPress website.
How to moderate comments
Step 1: Go to your comments
Log in to your WordPress dashboard and click on Comments in the left-hand menu. You'll see a list of all comments on your site, organised by status: Pending, Approved, Spam, and Trash.
Step 2: Approve or reject comments
Hover over a pending comment to see your options. You can Approve it to make it visible on your site, Reply to respond directly, mark it as Spam, or move it to the Trash. You can also use the checkboxes to select multiple comments and apply bulk actions.
Step 3: Edit a comment
If a comment has a typo or contains something you'd like to adjust, click Edit to open the comment editor. You can change the comment text, the author name, email, or URL. Click Update when you're done.
How to configure your comment settings
To control how comments work across your site, go to Settings > Discussion in your WordPress dashboard. Here are the key options:
Allow or disable comments on new posts
Under "Default post settings", you'll see Allow people to submit comments on new posts. Untick this box if you'd prefer to turn off comments on all future posts. You can still enable or disable comments on individual posts from the post editor.
Require approval before comments appear
Under "Before a comment appears", tick Comment must be manually approved. This means no comment will show on your site until you've reviewed and approved it — a good option if you want full control.
Hold comments with links for moderation
Under "Comment moderation", you can set the number of links a comment is allowed to contain before it's automatically held for review. Spam comments often include multiple links, so keeping this set to 1 or 2 is a good idea.
Close comments on older posts
Tick Automatically close comments on posts older than [X] days to stop comments on old content. This is useful for reducing spam on posts that have been up for a while.
How to disable comments on a single page or post
Step 1: Open the page or post in the WordPress editor.
Step 2: In the right-hand sidebar, click on the Post (or Page) tab and scroll down to Discussion.
Step 3: Untick Allow comments and update the post.
If you don't see the Discussion option, click the three dots (⋮) at the top of the editor, select Preferences, go to Panels, and make sure Discussion is toggled on.
Dealing with spam comments
Spam comments are an unavoidable part of running a WordPress website. To keep them under control:
Use the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin (included with most WordPress installs) to automatically filter spam.
Require manual approval for all comments so nothing gets published without your review.
Close comments on older posts where spam tends to accumulate.
Add specific words, URLs, or IP addresses to your blocklist under Settings > Discussion > Disallowed Comment Keys.
If you're not using comments at all, it's perfectly fine to disable them entirely. Go to Settings > Discussion and untick all the default comment options.
If you need a hand managing comments or cleaning up spam on your WordPress site, feel free to get in touch with SevenDev — we're happy to help.
