Chapter 4: Dealing with Comments and Spam

In This Chapter

Making the decision to allow comments

Working with comments and trackbacks

Using Akismet to help combat spam

One of the most exciting aspects of blogging with WordPress is getting feedback from your readers on articles your publish to your blog. Feedback, also known as blog comments, is akin to having a guestbook on your blog.

People leave notes for you that are published to your site, and through these notes, you can respond and engage your readers in conversation about the topic. Having this function on your blog allows you to expand the thoughts and ideas you present in your blog posts by giving readers the opportunity to add their two cents’ worth.

In this chapter, you can decide whether to allow comments on your site, figure out how to manage those comments, use trackbacks, and discover the negative aspects of allowing comments (such as spam).

Deciding to Allow Comments on Your Site

Some blog users say that a blog without comments isn’t a blog at all because the point of having a blog, in some minds, is to foster communication and interaction between the site authors and the readers. This belief is common in the blogging community because experiencing visitor feedback via comments is part of what’s made blogging so popular. However, allowing comments is a personal choice, and you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

Positive aspects of allowing comments

Allowing comments on your blog lets audience members actively involve themselves in your blog by creating a discussion and dialogue about your content. Mostly, readers find commenting a satisfying experience when they visit blogs because comments make them part of the discussion.

Depending on the topic you write about on your blog, allowing comments sends the message that you, as the author/owner of the site, are open to the views and opinions of your readers. Having a comment form on your site that readers can use to leave their feedback on your articles (such as the one shown in Figure 4-1) is like having a great big Welcome to My Home sign on your site — it invites users in to share thoughts and participate in discussions.

Figure 4-1: Readers use the Leave a Reply form to share their comments.

If you want to build a community of people who come back to your site frequently, respond to as many comments that your readers leave on your blog as possible. When people take the time to leave you a comment on your content, they like to know that you’re reading it and they appreciate hearing your feedback to them. Plus, it keeps discussions lively and active on your site. Figure 4-2 illustrates what comments look like after they’re published to your site. (Note: The actual design and layout of the comments on sites varies from theme to theme; you can find information on theme design in Book VI.)

Figure 4-2: Blog readers comment on a blog.

Exploring reasons to disallow comments

Under certain circumstances, you may not want to allow readers to leave comments freely on your site. For example, if you wrote a blog post on a topic that is considered very controversial, you may not want to invite comments because the topic may incite flame wars or comments that are insulting to you or your readers. If you’re not interested in the point of view or feedback of readers on your site, or if your content doesn’t really lend itself to reader feedback, you may decide to disallow comments entirely.

In making the decision to have comments, you have to be prepared for the fact that not everyone is going to agree with what you write; especially if you’re writing on a topic that invites a wide array of opinions, such as politics, religion, or op-ed pieces. As a site owner, you make the decision, ahead of time, whether you want readers dropping in and leaving their own views, or even disagreeing with you on yours (sometimes vehemently!).

If you’re on the fence about whether to allow comments, the WordPress platform allows you to toggle that decision on a per-post basis. Therefore, each time you publish a post or article on your website, you can indicate in the Post Options (on the Add New Post page of your Dashboard) whether this particular post should allow discussion. You may choose to disallow comments entirely on your site, which you can configure in the Discussion Settings on the Dashboard, or disallow them on only certain posts, which you can configure on the Dashboard on the Edit Post page, which I talk about in Book IV, Chapter 1.

Interacting with Readers through Comments

People can leave notes for you that are published to your site, and you can respond and engage your readers in conversation about the topic at hand. (Refer to Figure 4-1 and Figure 4-2.) Having this function on your blog creates the opportunity to expand the thoughts and ideas that you present in your blog post by giving your readers the opportunity to share their own thoughts.

On the WordPress Dashboard, you have full administrative control over who can and can’t leave comments. In addition, if someone leaves a comment that has questionable content, you can edit the comment or delete it. You’re also free to disallow comments on your blog. The Discussion Settings page on your Dashboard contains all the settings for allowing, or disallowing, comments on your site; flip back to Book III, Chapter 2 to dig into those settings, what they mean, and how you can use them to configure the exact interactive environment that you want for your site.

Tracking back

The best way to understand trackbacks is to think of them as comments, except for one thing: Trackbacks are comments left on your blog by other blogs, not by actual people. Although this process may sound mysterious, it’s actually perfectly reasonable.

A trackback happens when you make a post on your blog and, within that post, you provide a link to a post made by another blogger in a different blog. When you publish that post, your blog sends a sort of electronic memo to the blog you linked to. That blog receives the memo and posts an acknowledgment of receipt in a comment within the post that you linked to on their site. Trackbacks work between most blogging platforms; for example, between WordPress and Blogger or WordPress and Typepad.

That memo is sent via a network ping (a tool used to test, or verify, whether a link is reachable across the Internet) from your site to the site you link to. This process works as long as both blogs support trackback protocol. Trackbacks can also come to your site by way of a pingback — which, really, is the same thing as a trackback, but the terminology varies from blog platform to blog platform.

Sending a trackback to a blog is a nice way of telling the blogger that you like the information she presented in her blog post. Every blogger appreciates the receipt of trackbacks to their posts from other bloggers. Figure 4-3 shows one trackback link.

Figure 4-3: Trackback links on a blog.

Comment and trackback display

Almost every single WordPress theme displays comments at the bottom of each post published in WordPress. You can do custom styling of the comments so that they match the design of your site by using several items:

WordPress template tags: Tags related to the display of comments and trackbacks. For more on these tags, see Book VI, Chapter 3.

Basic HTML: Using HTML markup helps you provide unique styles to display content. For information about the use of basic HTML, check out Book VI.

CSS: Every WordPress theme has a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) template called style.css. Within this CSS template, you define the styles and CSS markup that creates a custom look and feel for the comment and trackback display on your site. You can find more information about using CSS in Book VI.

Graphics: Using graphics to enhance and define your branding, style, and visual design is an integral part of web design. Because a single chapter isn’t sufficient to fully cover graphic design, you may want to check out WordPress Web Design For Dummies, which I wrote, for great information on graphic and website design with WordPress.

WordPress widgets: WordPress has a built-in widget to display the most recent comments published to your site by your visitors. You also can find several plugins that display comments in different ways, including top comments, most popular posts based on the number of comments, comments that display the author’s photo, and more. For information about widgets and plugins for these purposes, flip to Book VI, Chapter 1 and Book VII, Chapters 1 and 2, respectively.

Managing Comments and Trackbacks

When you invite readers to comment on your site, you, as the site administrator, have full access to manage and edit those comments through the Comments page, which you can access on your WordPress Dashboard.

To find your comments, click the Comments link on the Comments menu; the Comments page opens. (See Figure 4-4.)

Figure 4-4: The Comments page contains all the comments and trackbacks on your blog.

When you hover your mouse pointer over a comment, several links appear that give you the opportunity to manage the comment:

Unapprove: This link appears only if you have comment moderation turned on. Also, it appears only on approved comments. The comment is placed in the moderation queue, which you can get to by clicking the Pending link that appears below the Comments page header. The moderation queue is kind of a holding area for comments that haven’t yet been published to your blog.

Reply: Makes a text box drop down. In the text box, you can type and submit your reply to this person. This feature eliminates the need to load your live site in order to reply to a comment.

Quick Edit: Opens the comment options inline without ever leaving the Comments page. You can configure options such as name, e-mail address, URL, and comment content. Click the Save button to save your changes.

Edit: Opens the Edit Comment page, where you can edit the different fields, such as name, e-mail address, URL, and comment content. (See Figure 4-5.)

Spam: Marks the comment as spam and marks it as spam in the database, where it will never be heard from again! (Actually, it’s stored in the database as spam; you just don’t see it in your comments list unless you click the Spam link at the top of the Comments page.)

Trash: This link does exactly what it says; it sends the comment to the trash and deletes it from your blog. You can access comments that have been sent to the trash to permanently delete them from your blog or to restore them.

Figure 4-5: Edit a user’s comment on the Edit Comment page.

If you have a lot of comments listed on the Comments page and want to edit them in bulk, select the check boxes to the left of all the comments you want to manage; then select one of the following from the Bulk Actions drop-down list at the bottom left of the page: Approve, Mark as Spam, Unapprove, or Delete.

If you have your options set so that comments aren’t published to your blog until you approve them, you can approve comments from the Comments page, as well. Just click the Pending link to list the comments that are pending moderation. If you have comments and/or trackbacks awaiting moderation, they appear on this page, and you can approve them, mark them as spam, or delete them.

WordPress immediately notifies you of any comments sitting in the moderation queue, awaiting your action. This notification, which appears on every single page, is a small circle, or bubble, on the left navigation menu, to the right of Comments. Figure 4-6 shows that I have 30 comments pending moderation. I had better get busy and deal with those comments!

Figure 4-6: A small circle tells me that I have 30 comments pending moderation.

Tackling Spam with Akismet

No blogger likes spam. In fact, blogging services such as WordPress have spent untold hours in the name of stopping spammers in their tracks, and for the most part, the services have been successful. Occasionally, however, spammers sneak through. Many spammers are offensive, and all of them are frustrating because they don’t contribute to the ongoing conversations that occur in blogs. (A spammer’s only goal is to generate traffic to his website.)

All WordPress installations have one significant thing in common: Akismet, a WordPress plugin. It’s my humble opinion that Akismet is the mother of all plugins and that no WordPress blog is complete without a fully activated version of Akismet running in it.

Apparently, WordPress agrees because the plugin is packaged in every WordPress software release beginning with version 2.0. Akismet was created by the folks at Automattic, the same folks who brought you the WordPress.com-hosted version.

Akismet is the answer to combating comment and trackback spam. Matt Mullenweg of Automattic says Akismet is a "collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again" (from the Akismet website at http://akismet.com).

I started blogging in 2002 with the Movable Type blogging platform and moved to WordPress in 2003. As blogging became more and more popular, comment and trackback spam became more and more of a nuisance. One morning in 2004, I found that 2,300 pieces of disgusting comment spam had been published to my blog. Something had to be done! The folks at Automattic did a fine thing with Akismet. Since the emergence of Akismet, I barely had to think about comment or trackback spam except for the few times a month I check my Akismet spam queue.

I cover the use of plugins in Book VII. However, this chapter wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t show you how to activate and use the Akismet plugin on your site. Book VII covers the use, installation, and management of other plugins for your WordPress site.

Akismet is already included in every WordPress installation, so you don’t have to worry about downloading and installing it, because it’s already there. Follow these steps to activate and begin using Akismet:

1. Click the Plugins link on the left navigation menu of the Dashboard to load the Plugins page.

2. Click the Activate link below the Akismet plugin name and description.

A yellow box appears at the top of the page, saying Akismet is almost ready. You must enter your Akismet API key for it to work. (See Figure 4-7.) An API key is a string of numbers and letters that functions like a unique password given to you by Akismet; it's the key that allows your WordPress.org application to communicate with your Akismet account.

Figure 4-7: After you activate Akismet, WordPress tells you that the plugin isn’t quite ready to use.

3. Click the link in the yellow box to navigate to the Akismet Configuration page.

4. If you have an API key, enter it in the Akismet API Key text field and then click the Update Options button to save your changes.

You can stop here if you already have a key, but if you do not have an Akismet key, keep following the steps in this section.

5. Click the Akismet.com link on the Akismet Configuration page.

The Akismet website opens at http://akismet.com/wordpress.

6. Click the Get an Akismet API Key button.

The signup page on the Akismet website (http://akismet.com/signup) opens, where you can choose from several different options for obtaining an Akismet key:

• Enterprise: $50/month for people who own multiple WordPress-powered websites and want to use Akismet on all of them.

• Pro: $5/month for people who own one small, nonpersonal (or business) WordPress-powered site.

• Personal: $0–$120/year for people who own one small, personal, WordPress-powered blog. You can choose to pay nothing ($0), or if you’d like to contribute a little cash toward the cause of combating spam, you can opt to spend up to $120 per year for your Akismet key subscription.

7. Select and pay for (if needed) your Akismet key.

After you’ve gone through the signup process, Akismet provides you with an API key. Copy that key by selecting it with your mouse pointer, right-clicking, and choosing Copy.

8. When you have your API key, go to the Akismet Configuration page by clicking the Akismet Configuration link on the Plugins menu on your WordPress Dashboard.

9. Enter the API key in the Akismet API Key text box (see Figure 4-8) and click the Update Options button to fully activate the Akismet plugin.

On the Akismet Configuration Page, after you’ve entered and saved your key, you also have two options that you can select to further manage your spam protection:

Figure 4-8: Akismet verification confirmation message on the Akismet Configuration page.

Auto-delete Spam Submitted on Posts More Than a Month Old: Enable this option by selecting the check box next to it to tell Akismet to automatically delete spam comments on posts that are more than a month old.

Show The Number of Comments You’ve Approved Beside Each Comment Author: Enable this option by selecting the check box next to it to tell Akismet to display the number of approved comments each comment author on your blog has.

Akismet catches spam and throws it into a queue, holding the spam for 15 days and then deleting it from your database. It’s probably worth your while to check the Akismet Spam page once a week to make sure that the plugin hasn’t captured any legitimate comments or trackbacks.

You can rescue those non-spam captured comments and trackbacks by following these steps (after you log in to your WordPress Dashboard):

1. Click Comments on the left navigation menu.

The Comments page appears, displaying a list of the most recent comments on your blog.

2. Click the Spam link.

The Comments page now displays all spam comments that the plugin caught.

3. Browse through the list of spam comments, looking for any comments or trackbacks that are legitimate.

4. If you locate a comment or trackback that’s legitimate, click the Approve link directly below the entry.

The comment is marked as legitimate. In other words, WordPress recognizes that you don’t consider this comment to be spam. WordPress then approves the comment and publishes it on your blog.

Check your spam filter often. I just found four legitimate comments caught in my spam filter; I was able to de-spam them, releasing them from the binds of Akismet and unleashing them upon the world.