Category: Authorising Comments

Your site is set up to be able to receive comments on your posts and pages.

If you would like to disable/enable this feature, follow these instructions.

1. Go to the top of your screen while in the window you input the new post/page.  Make sure you are scrolled to the top of the page and look to the right.  Click the ‘Screen Options’ button.  Make sure that the ‘Discussion’ box is ticked.

2. After each post/page you will then have the choice to allow comments (tick the box under where you enter the text), it should say ‘allow comments’, also tick the one that says ‘allow pingbacks.’  These should be automatically ticked for you.

To accept a comment, you will receive an email notification advising you someone has left one, simply follow the links and accept.  Once you accept a comment from someone for the first time, you no longer have to do it again and they are automatically authorised.   It is possible to change this setting if someone starts leaving untold abuse etc.

If you find yourself receiving many comments from people you don’t recognise, then no matter how genuine it looks, it is usually a spam bot.  Be sure to see the post about Spam Protection.

As your site starts to receive traffic, so it automatically receives hits from auto-bots.  These are programs acting as real people, leaving innocent looking comments on your posts.  Once you accept one of the comments from them, they are then authorised to leave untold others, which generally tend to be link after link of spam.

To protect yourself from this plague, you need to do the following.

1. Create and activate an account at WordPress.com (this is totally different to the wordpress associated with your website).

2.  Create and activate an account with Akismet.  Follow the steps to acquire your Akismet key.  If you are  familiar with plug ins on your site, then go to the already installed plug in and activate it using your key.  Alternatively,  once you get the email containing your key forward it to us and we will set it up for you.

PLEASE NOTE:

Until you follow the above instructions, you  WILL get untold message after message, comment after comment from what look like genuine people leaving you kind words about what a wonderful site you have.