What are Comments?
Comments are enabled by default. Your visitors can add their thoughts under your post.
To review you can access Comments from the back end of WordPress. Any Comments that are currently waiting for moderation will be highlighted in pink.
Move your mouse over an existing comment and you’ll see the action links for it – Approve (Unapprove, if comment has been previously approved), Reply, Quick Edit, Edit, Spam, Bin. These are all self explanatory.
If you want to move or delete something out of Spam\Bin, click the appropriate link above the existing list of comments and just below the Comments title. The grey number in brackets following the link, indicates how many items you have for each comment state.
After clicking the link the filtered group you are in will embolden and appropriate action links will become available. Illustrated below:
Spam (7). Not Spam, Delete Permanently.
Not Spam will move the item back to All (if you hadn’t originally approved, it will still need to be moderated.) From the Bin you can Restore. If you Delete Permanently this will be an immediate deletion without any confirmation that you wish to do so. You will also be able to use the Empty Spam or Empty Bin buttons to again immediately and permanently delete all items, as a job lot.
What are Pingbacks?
Pingbacks are enabled by default.
When people link to your post, WordPress automatically sends a pingback to you as the content author (if they have also enabled this notification in their own settings). This way you can keep track of who has inserted a link in their post content to your site.
A WordPress Codex working illustration of a pingback:
For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne’s article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne’s original post. Using pingback, Kathleen’s software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne’s software can then include this information on her site.
Pingbacks will be listed amongst the regular comments but can be distinguished from ordinary comments because the anchor text of the link to your site is automatically placed in square brackets by WordPress.
To filter your comments list so you only see pingbacks, click the All comment types drop down list, select Pings and click the Filter button.
Change Default Settings on a Per Post\Page Basis
Sometimes, you may wish to override the default settings for either a Post or a Page. To do this, open the Post or Page and scroll down until you reach the Discussion metabox. (If the Discussion metabox is not visible, click on the Screen Options top right and then tick the Discussion box.)
Uncheck or check Allow comments \ Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page, as required.
