WordPress Comments

As you may already know, WordPress was initially developed as a blogging platform. Naturally, blogs are there to interact with an audience, so comments are an essential part of the experience.

The Comments section of the WordPress dashboard holds all the functionality you need to manage the comments people leave on your posts. It has a very straightforward interface reminiscent of the Posts and Pages ones. The whole page is one big table that shows you all the comments the posts on your website have. 

To break down the table, you have the comment's author, the comment itself, the post it was written on, and the submission date. Clicking on the Screen Options button at the top of the page will let you customize the table. You can toggle columns on or off, change how many items appear per page, and change the layout between compact and extended. All extended does is show the contextual buttons under each comment permanently, instead of only when you hover over the comment itself.

Speaking of these buttons, they will allow you to manage the comment, depending on your WordPress setup.

• Approve/Unapprove - By default WordPress does not require admins to approve comments manually. Comments will be automatically approved and appear under the post. Unapproving a comment will hide it from the post. If you change the comment behavior, you will have to Approve each comment before it appears;
• Reply - This allows you to reply to a specific comment directly;
• Quick Edit - You can change the name and URL of the commenter, their email, and also the comment itself;
• Edit - This function is similar to Quick Edit, but it also allows you to change the status of the comment, the date it was published, or move it directly to the trash;
• Spam - This marks a comment as spam. The comment will not appear under the post and will be moved to the Spam section of the interface. They can be accessed via the link above the table. You can unmark a comment at any time, too;
• Trash - Trashing a comment will stop it from appearing under a post and move it to the Trash section. Like with spam comments, you can access the trash from the link above the table. Keep in mind that trashed comments will be deleted after thirty days.

As we mentioned earlier, the links above the table let you filter comments based on their status. Additionally, if you want to approve, unapprove, spam, or trash a bunch of comments, you can do that with the bulk options above the table. Simply tick the comments you want, then click on the Bulk Actions dropdown. Select what you want to do, then click Apply.

There is not much else to say about the Comments section of the WordPress dashboard. It is a simple but very straightforward and efficient interface that will make managing your comments a breeze.