What Is a Comment in WordPress?

The comments section usually sits at the bottom of a WordPress post or page. Visitors type a response into a text box there, and once you approve it, WordPress displays the comment beneath your content.

Site owners, especially bloggers, benefit from joining those discussions. Threaded replies keep readers on the page, and answering questions in public can help build community and trust, and even promote sales.

How WordPress comments work

When a visitor submits a comment, WordPress follows your Discussion settings and either publishes it immediately or holds it for your approval. Either way, it lands on the Comments screen in your WordPress admin under one of four statuses:

• Pending: submitted, but invisible to visitors until you approve it.
• Approved: published and publicly visible below the post.
• Spam: flagged as unwanted and hidden from visitors.
• Trash: marked for deletion. WordPress permanently deletes trashed comments after 30 days.

Readers can reply to a specific comment as well as to the post itself. These threaded (nested) replies appear directly under the comment they answer, and WordPress can show each commenter’s avatar next to their name.

Comment moderation settings

The controls live under Settings → Discussion in your dashboard. Before you open comments to the world, decide how strict to be. You can:

• Require that every comment be manually approved before it’s published (the “Comment must be manually approved” option).
• Auto-approve commenters who already have a previously approved comment.
• Hold any comment containing 2 or more links in the moderation queue.
• Require commenters to fill out a name and email address.
• Restrict commenting to registered, logged-in users.
• Automatically close comments on posts older than a set number of days.

The same screen can also email you whenever a comment is held for moderation, so pending comments don’t sit unanswered for weeks.

Turning comments on or off

The site-wide default lives under Settings → Discussion: check or uncheck “Allow people to post comments on new articles.” That applies to new posts only; anything you’ve already published keeps its current setting. To enable or disable comments on one existing post or page, open it in the editor and change the setting in its Discussion panel. To change many at once, select them on the Posts or Pages screen and use the bulk Edit action to allow or disallow comments.

A simple rule: keep comments open where discussion adds value, auto-close them on older posts to cut spam, and disable them on static pages that don’t invite conversation.

Comments vs. pingbacks and trackbacks

Comments aren’t the only reader responses WordPress collects. Three kinds can land in your moderation queue:

• A comment is written by a person, directly on your post or page.
• A pingback is an automated notification another blog sends when it links to your content; it carries no excerpt of the linking post.
• A trackback does the same job for older blogging systems, but it must be sent manually and includes an excerpt of the linking post.

All three wait in the same moderation queue, and a checkbox under Settings → Discussion controls whether new posts accept link notifications from other blogs.

Stopping comment spam

Every open comment box eventually attracts comment spam: automated junk that spambots post to plant links and lure clicks. Three of the built-in Discussion settings above do a lot of the work with no plugin at all: hold comments with 2 or more links, auto-close comments on older posts, and require a previously approved comment.

For higher volume, add Akismet. It checks every submission against a shared database of known spam and files the junk under your Spam status automatically. Akismet prompts you for an Akismet.com API key once activated; keys are free for personal blogs, while businesses and commercial sites need a paid subscription. Our guide to stopping WordPress comment spam with Akismet walks through the setup.