One of the powerful features of WordPress is the collaborative nature of the content. Instead of just providing a page for visitors to read, they can interact and provide feedback through comments. These comments appear below posts in chronological order, and can be the catalyst for further commenting.

It’s important to note however, that the comments section of a blog can be an easy target for spam. Due to this limitation, we typically set all comments to be moderated before they appear on the site. This means that when new comments are submitted they are flagged as pending, and the WordPress administrator will be sent an email notification. As the site administrator, you may then log into WordPress and take the appropriate action.

To help prevent spam comments, we also install a comment spam filter plugin. This plugin automatically catches and flags most spam comments. But like most automated spam systems, it is not 100 percent accurate. This leads to this commonly asked question:

Q: What can I do to prevent spam from invading my website?

A: The simple solution is to log into WordPress and mark the comments as spam. Simply trashing the comment does not address the problem. When the administrator instead marks a comment as spam, the WordPress system will learn from that action and take precautions to recognize this type of spam comments in the future.

So although we can’t prevent the existence of spam robots, luckily WordPress has the tool set to counteract their efforts. To learn more about the many built-in features that make WordPress websites so successful, contact me at alicia@checkerboard.com!