Generally a blogger faces the dilemma of whether to keep the visitor comments for moderation or to have them get published directly. More often than not, a visitor to your blog will be happy to see his comment flash immediately rather than waiting for it to get moderated. More often than not, as an administrator, you would prefer to moderate the comment before it is all out. So here is an ideal case of a bottleneck. What to do? What not to do?

Now, since WordPress development is a tricky thing, one can’t have a correct answer for that question. The answer, doubtlessly, will vary from one situation to another. Whether to let the comments get published without any moderation or to moderate them beforehand depends largely on the kind of blog that you are running. We have attempted to make this bottleneck slightly wider by giving out the following guidelines.

Moderation: for the Motion

If you let the comments sit for a while before you moderate it and then publish it, it will give you the opportunity to check whether the comment is appropriate or not. It will also be the master of deciding which comments are genuinely meant for your blog, and which ones are spams or mere de-Famers.

The only minus with moderation seems to be that usually readers prefer to see their comments flash immediately. If this does not happen, it discourages them from visiting your site very often, or from leaving comments.

Moderation: against the Motion

Free flowing comments are a major reason for visitors to visit your website regularly and leave comments. It builds an almost “real-time” kind of an interface. IT enables for a better scope of comment discussions, arguments and suggestions.

Also it makes for an interesting read for other visitors who visit your website. The user community binds as one and likes to be given the independence to say what they feel like.

Tips and Tricks

Whether you trim or avert comments, the subsequent tips will help you better understand WordPress discussion settings and administer your site more efficiently.

Anytime Email

The email segment of WordPress discussion settings enables you to obtain email notifications when comments are posted to your site.

When you first select “Anyone posts a comment,” it will send the site administrator (you) an email notifying you about the comment along with its contents, notwithstanding whether the comment has been approved, stopped for moderation, or even a spam. This email will also bear many links that help you to approve/reject the comment. It might even bear a single link to take you to your admin panel dashboard, where from you can do the necessary moderations.

Comment Moderation

This section allows you to fix how comments are to be qualified, and it offers a bit of automation to make the administrator’s work simpler.

Various administrators allow visitors to include links or URLs in a comment. But too many links are commonly not wanted, and are often a distinctive feature of blog spam. To thwart these spamming comments you can simply use this section to tell WordPress how many comment links will spontaneously flag that post for moderation or blacklisting. Merely enter the number in the settings box and you’re on the way to cleaner and safer comments.

What’s more, you can also make a pre-set list of various words, URLs, email addresses or even IP addresses that will trigger this response and flag the comment directly, sending it to a place for your moderation before flashing on the website. So, this is where you can put in curse words, URLs, email addresses or IP addresses which will trigger that same comment moderation blocking.

Conclusion

Although it may seem still a little ambiguous, so as to what should be the correct approach with your blog, we would suggest that you first understand the role that you want your blog to play. Do you want it to be informative or interactive? Usually when you outsource WordPress development, ensure that your developers are putting these tips to work depending upon your requirement. Then, managing you blog should be a cakewalk!