Discussion Settings

I've covered settings that govern how you post to your WordPress Blog and how people read your blog, so what's left? Commenting, of course. Most of the options that you find in the Discussion tab are designed to reduce comment spam, allowing you to set a few simple parameters that apply to all comments on your WordPress Blog.

Default article settings

The options in the Default Article Settings part apply to all of your posts they're all enabled when you install WordPress. Here's what the three options mean:

• Attempt to Notify Any Blogs Linked to from the Article. When you link to a blog post, WordPress attempts to notify the recipient of the hyperlink so that he can track who's linking to his blog post. This notification is known as a pingback. Then the linked blog can be configured to list all pingbacks on a given post, thereby linking to your blog post on the post you linked to. Why would you want to turn this option off? As the setting's name itself notes, it slows posting slightly. The main reason for clearing this check box is to keep your WordPress Blog private, if you don't want to broadcast to the world the fact that you're blogging.
• Allow Link Notifications from Other Blogs. This features tells your blog to accept, and display, the trackbacks and pingbacks that other blogs send to your WordPress Blog.
• Allow People to Post Comments on the Article. This setting enables or disables comments on blog posts at the system level. Out of the gate, WordPress assumes that you want people to comment on your posts, so it enables comments. If you'd rather not deal with comments, simply clear this check box. No matter what you set here, you also have the option of enabling or disabling comments on a per-post basis.

Notification options

Now the e-mail address you entered earlier comes into play. No doubt you'll be interested to know when people post a comment on something you wrote. You can direct WordPress to e-mail you, the administrator, each and every time someone comments on any blog post, as well as every time a comment is awaiting moderation. Choose one of the E-Mail Me Whenever options to be notified when:

• Anyone Posts a Comment. Every comment on your WordPress Blog, whether or not it's about a blog post you wrote, is e-mailed to you because you're the blog's administrator. This feature is great for keeping track of discussions on your WordPress Blog, but if your blog starts getting a serious amount of comments, your inbox can get overwhelmed quickly.
• A Comment Is Held for Moderation. Another weapon against comment spam is comment moderation, which keeps all new incoming comments in a virtual holding pen. A comment can't be published on your WordPress Blog until a user of your blog who plays the proper role logs in and approves it manually. If you enable this option, you get an e-mail about every comment that's waiting for moderation and won't forget to approve legitimate comments.

Comment management

You can set some ground rules for comments in the next part of the Discussion tab: Before a Comment Appears. These options make managing comments a little easier by giving some comments a pass out of moderation. You can set any of these options:

• An Administrator Must Always Approve the Comment. You'll notice that this option isn't enabled by default. Who wants to spend all her time approving comments? But if you're a control freak, you can simply check this check box to make sure that no comments can on your WordPress Blog without your approval.
• Comment Author Must Fill out Name and E-Mail. It's very easy to be anonymous on the Internet, and when people don't need to take responsibility for their actions, they do things that they'd normally never do, such as leave nasty comments on nice people's blogs (which has happened to me!). Forcing people to fill in a name and e-mail address makes them think about leaving a harsh comment, even if they simply comment under a fake name and e-mail address. If you want to allow anonymous commenters, clear this check box.
• Comment Author Must Have a Previously Approved Comment. Rewarding good behavior is a tenet of our society, and the same holds true in WordPress. This option works on the theory that someone who had a previous comment approved by an administrator has earned the right to leave comments without moderation.

If you enable this option, as soon as a preapproved commenter leaves another comment, it appears on the blog. This arrangement not only makes your commenter feel good, but also means that you have to spend less time moderating comments-and that's a good thing, as one famous blogger might say.

Comment moderation

I've mentioned comment moderation a few times already, and now I can give you a tour of the part that controls how comments end up in the moderation queue. Your WordPress Blog is your kingdom, and you can rule it as you like. Setting a few options in the Comment Moderation part helps you fight the scourge of comment spam. By default, a comment that has two or more hyperlinks in it is held for moderation, even if the commenter in question is preapproved to leave comments. Why do this? Most comment spam contains a large number of hyperlinks, usually to porn sites, which you probably aren't going to want on your WordPress Blog. If you think legitimate users will be leaving more than two hyperlinks in the body of their comments ,you can adjust the number to your liking. The large text box in this part lets you define some criteria that land a comment in moderation, no matter who leaves it. You can list words, IP addresses, or particular hyperlinks -one per line. If the terms you enter here appear in the name, e-mail, URL, or text part of a comment, that comment is held in the moderation queue to wait for approval.

Comment blacklist

One step beyond comment moderation is the comment blacklist. To use this feature, just enter a list of banned items in the Comment Blacklist part. When any of these items is used in a comment, WordPress marks that comment as spam. Any comment that's marked as spam doesn't appear on your WordPress Blog or even go into the moderation queue; it's held in your blog's spam queue, which is just like the Junk Mail folder in your e-mail account. By default, WordPress doesn't give you a way to see what comments are in the spam queue. But if you activate the Akismet spam plug-in, you unlock several options related to spam comments that help you fight spam.