Allowing comments on our websites is a great way to engage your community, build rapport and boost your search engine optimization (SEO). Whether your website is for your non-profit, business or personal blog you will likely find the need to moderate the discussion on your posts and pages. Comment moderation is one tool of many to create healthy boundaries with your community. Setting healthy boundaries with comment discussion protects your website from humans and bots that spam advertisements, solicit indecent content, derail your SEO efforts and troll others with malicious intent. Understanding how to enable and disable the comments on your website is important for you to know.
Step 1: Log In to Your WordPress Administration Panel
If you are unsure how to login to your website that uses WordPress as your content management system (CMS) watch this short two minute video to learn how.
Step 2: Navigate to a Post or a Page
Use the admin menu to navigate to either a post or a page. If you are logged into your website using a browser on a tablet, laptop or desktop then your menu will look like this screenshot.
If you are on a tablet tap the menu item for “Posts” or “Pages” then tap “All Posts/Pages”. From here you will want to select the post/page that you want to make changes to.
You may select a specific post or page by clicking on its title.
Step 3: Locate the “Document” Menu and Tap on “Discussion”
The “Document” menu tab is on the right hand side of the “edit” page just underneath the “Preview” and “Publish” buttons.
Step 4: Disable or Enable Comments
To disable comments simply deselect the checkbox next to the “Allow comments” option. To enable comments check the checkbox.
What if I Don’t See the “Document” or “Discussion” Menu Items?
If you do not see these options for a page or a post then you may need to update your version of WordPress.