First Time Blogging WordPress Discussion Settings

First Time Blogging WordPress Discussion Settings talks about the Discussion settings in the admin panel sidebar and more.

There are a few admin settings you need to check and set up before you are ready to publish your blog. The following steps will help you understand the discussion settings in the admin panel. It is important to set this up correctly. Make sure you take your time understanding what is the function of each option available.

Note: You must be logged in as an administrator to make the following changes. These settings are based on WordPress 5.7.2.

Recommended Links:

• Support Article Settings General Screen
• WordPress setup tutorials

First Time Blogging WordPress Discussion Settings

Step 1 ) Log into your site as an Administrator and go to Settings -> Discussion in the sidebar menu as illustrated in the image below to check the following admin options.

Discussion Settings

Step 2 ) The following image Default post settings allows you to enable the following options.

Default post settings

• Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the post
• Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts
• Allow people to submit comments on new posts

Other comment settings

Step 3 ) The following image Other comment settings allows you to enable the following options.

Other comment settings

• Comment author must fill out name and email
• Users must be registered and logged in to comment
• Automatically close comments on posts older than 14 days
• Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set
• Enable threaded (nested) comments 5 levels deep
• Break comments into pages with 50 top level comments per page and the last page displayed by default
• Comments should be displayed with the older comments at the top of each page

E-mail me whenever / Before a comment appears / Comment Moderation

Step 4 ) The following image allows you to enable the following options.

E-mail me whenever

• Anyone posts a comment
• A comment is held for moderation

Before a comment appears

• Comment must be manually approved
• Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Comment Moderation

• Hold a comment in the queue if it contains 2 or more links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.)
• When a comment contains any of these words in its content, author name, URL, email, IP address, or browser’s user agent string, it will be held in the moderation queue. One word or IP address per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”.

Disallowed Comment Keys

Step 5 ) The following image Disallowed Comment Keys allows you to manage the following option.

When a comment contains any of these words in its content, author name, URL, email, IP address, or browser’s user agent string, it will be put in the Trash. One word or IP address per line. It will match inside words, so “press” will match “WordPress”.

Avatars

Step 6 ) The following image Avatars allows you to setup the following options.

Note: I recommend the following plugin WP User Avatar to manage your avatars.

Avatar Display

• Show Avatars

Maximum Rating

• G — Suitable for all audiences
• PG — Possibly offensive, usually for audiences 13 and above
• R — Intended for adult audiences above 17
• X — Even more mature than above

Default Avatar

• Mystery Person
• Blank
• Gravatar Logo
• Identicon (Generated)
• Wavatar (Generated)
• MonsterID (Generated)
• Retro (Generated)
• Click on Save Changes button when you finish setting up these options.

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Click on the following URL Install plugins to continue with the setup.

If you have any questions please let me know. I will be updating this post from time to time so keep coming back for the latest.

Enjoy.

First Time Blogging Using WordPress List:

• First time blogging using WordPress.