Answered: Your Most Burning Questions About WORDPRESS DISCUSSION SETTINGS
Do you want to understand WordPress Discussion Settings? In this post, we have explained everything which is there in WordPress Discussion settings.
Default post settings
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Default post settings
How to Enable or Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks in WordPress?
Do you want to disable pingbacks and trackbacks on WordPress? Let us first find out what are these terms?
What is Pingback and Trackback?
Pingback and Trackback are used together most of the time but they have differences between them.
What is Trackback?
A Trackback is a notification that your website sends to another website or blog when you linked their website or any post into your post or page.
What is a Pingback?
On the other hand, pingback is an automated comment, that will be created in the comment section of the other blog post, to which you have linked in Your post.
Both Trackback and pingback work when the other website enables Pingbacks and Trackbacks.
Pingback vs Trackback
By the Definitions of pingback and Trackback, you understood that trackback is just a notification in the notification panel of the website, whereas pingbacks appear in the comment section of the website when you linked their post.
How to send out a ping to other websites?
Now the question is how can My website send out a ping to other websites?
Attempt to notify any blogs linked to the post:
The answer is very simple, go to the Discussion settings of Your WordPress and in the Default Post settings Check “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the post”
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Default Post Settings
How to Disable Trackbacks and Pingbacks?
Do you want to disable pingbacks and trackbacks? Then just go to WordPress Discussion settings, and in the Default Post settings Uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts”
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Default Post Settings
If you uncheck this, WordPress will disable both trackbacks and pingbacks to your website. As many experts say, we should disable the pingbacks and trackbacks as the spammers used these as a tool to send spam.
For any reason, if you want to Enable pingbacks and trackbacks then you can check the box.
How to disable Comments from the posts?
Do you want to disable comments from your posts? If you are reading this, then you want to disable the comments from your WordPress posts.
To Disable comments from the WordPress posts, you have to go to Discussion Settings in Your WordPress dashboard, then in Default Post Settings, you will see Allow People to Submit Comments on New Posts. Uncheck the checkbox before this, then you have successfully disabled comments from new posts.
Yes, you can enable comments to the posts you want while writing or editing that post.
On the other hand, if you want to enable comments on the new posts, then check that box.
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Default Post Settings
Note: In WordPress, by default, these boxes are checked.
Other Comment Settings in WordPress Discussion Settings
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Other Comment Settings
Here we will discuss each and every Comment setting in WordPress so that you have an idea about them. By the way, these all are self-explaining but for beginners, this might confusing
Comment author must fill out name and e-mail: The First one is Comment author must fill our name and email. If you want that the person who is commenting on your post should fill in his name and email address then Check this box. In Practice, the name and email address won’t be verified before the comment is submitted. But Spammers can comment more easily if this field is not mandatory. If we make this field mandatory, then Spammer has to spend some time.
How to Accept Comments only from Registered Users?
Do you want, only registered users must comment on your WordPress post. Then WordPress has this option for you.
Users must be registered and logged in to comment: If you check this box, then only registered or logged-in users can comment on your WordPress posts.
How to turned off comments on old posts automatically?
Do you want to turn off comments on your old posts automatically? Then you have this feature form WordPress.
Automatically close comments on articles older than [___] days: By default, 14 days are written in the brackets, if you want to change the days you can select days after which you don’t want comments on your post.
So, if you don’t want comments on your older posts, then check this box.
How to Add Opt-in Checkbox in Comments?
Do you want to add Opt-in Checkbox in your Comments?
Do you want to add a checkbox asking the user “save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment”? Then WordPress has this feature for you in its Discussion Settings.
Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set:
In the Other Comment Settings of discussion settings, check this box, if you want to have saved my name, email, check the box in your Comment sections.
Else, if you uncheck this box then the Save my name, email, and website checkbox won’t be shown below a comment.
Enable threaded (nested) comments [x] levels deep: If You want to have threaded comments in Your WordPress posts. In Brief, if you want a reply option to comments, then it can be achieved by Checking this box Enable threaded (nested) comments [x] levels deep. [x] level deep means the number of maximum replies you want for comment. Put that value here.
If you don’t want the Reply option to comment then uncheck this box.
By default, WordPress has checked this box.
How to add pagination in Comments without plugins?
If you want pagination to your comments and you want only suppose 10 comments should be shown, then user has to click before or next to read the next comments, then WordPress has this option in Discussion settings.
Break comments into pages with [X] top-level comments per page and the [last/first] page displayed by default. Comments should be displayed with the [older/newer] comments at the top of each page:
Check this box if you want to add pagination to the WordPress comments and replace X with the number of comments per page.
How to sort comments first to last or last to first in WordPress?
Now, if you want to sort comments from last to first or first to last then select the appropriate option from the above last/first dropdown menu.
Email me whenever in WordPress Discussion Settings
WordPress Dashboard >> Discussion Settings >> Email me whenever
In this section, the Website Administrator or the Post author will have the option to get the notification when someone posted a comment on his post, or comment is there for moderation or when someone likes the post.
How to get Email whenever someone comment on a post?
Anyone posts a comment: Check this box if you want to get notifications whenever someone comments on your post. So, whenever a single comment is posted on your post, then an email to the author of the post will be generated.
A comment is held for moderation: If you have multiple authors on your website, and by enabling the above Anyone posts a comment setting, the authors will be receiving an email whenever someone comments on it. Now, if you as the owner of the website want to check the activity and review the comments then by Checking this box, WordPress will send an email to the owner of the website whose email address is set in General Settings of WordPress Settings.
How to get Email whenever someone like posts?
Someone likes one of my posts: Check this box if you want to receive emails whenever someone likes your posts.
Before a Comment Appears in WordPress Discussion Settings
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Before a Comment Appears
This section of WordPress discussion settings provides the website owner a more control over the comments. The owner of the website will have control over the comments and he has the power to approve or reject the comments.
How to make comments manually approved?
A comment must be manually approved: Check this box if you want to manually approve the comments on your website. So before a comment is displayed on your website, it will be there in the admin comment section waiting for the admin or post author to manually approve the comment. By this, you can stop or reduce the activity of spammers.
If you want to automatically comment that should be published on the website then, uncheck this box.
Comment author must have a previously approved comment: Check this box if you want to automatically approve the comments of the comment authors whose comments are approved before by the administrator. So, if the email address of the comment author matches with the email address of the approved comment author, then it will automatically approve. Otherwise, the comments are held for moderation.
On the other hand, comments from blocked email addresses will be held for moderation.
Comment Moderation
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Comment Moderation
Hold a comment in the queue if it contains [x] or more links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.)
A common characteristic of spam comments is a large number of hyperlinks. In place of x write the minimum number of hyperlinks when you want to keep the comment in a queue. By default, it is 2.
When a comment contains any of these words in its content, author name, URL, email, IP address, or browser’s user agent string, it will be held in the moderation queue. One word or IP address per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”.
In the box provided write the content type, or author name, or URL or email address or IP address or other things . Be careful while writing the names or Ip addresses.
Avatars
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Avatar
These are self-explaining so we are just keeping what WordPress will have written on their settings. If you want the details do comment.
An avatar is an image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on avatar-enabled sites. Here you can enable the display of avatars for people who comment on your site.
Avatar Display: Check this box if you want to Show Avatars. Else, Avatars won’t be shown.
Maximum Rating
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Maximum Rating
This setting controls (or limits) the ‘highest’ level or rating of gravatar you allow to be displayed
G —Suitable for all audiences
PG — Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
R — Intended for adult audiences above 17
X — Even more, mature than above
Default Avatar
WordPress dashboard >> Settings >> Discussion Settings>> Default Avatar
For users without a custom avatar of their own, you can either display a generic logo or a generated one based on their email address.
- Mystery Person
- Blank
- Gravatar Logo
- Identicon (Generated)
- Wavatar (Generated)
- MonsterID (Generated)
- Retro (Generated)
Save Changes:
Make sure to click the save changes buttons to save the changes you have made to your website database. Once you clicked the button you will get a confirmation text that your settings saved successfully.
You can have a look at the discussion settings article at WordPress.Org
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