In our last blog we talked about Benefits & Drawbacks of having comments on a website. Today, We want to spread some more light on how to’s in respect to Comments with WordPress and Templatic themes.

What are Comments?

Comments provide a way to discuss or provide your thoughts on the topic with the post owner as well as other visitors.

In WordPress all comments are getting listed at Wp-admin > Comments section. Site admin can Approve, Spam, Trash the comments depending on the content of the comments site visitor have provided.

Comments settings

In WordPress, comments settings are given at WP-admin > Settings > Discussion section.

How to allow only logged in users to comment?

Enable the option “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” from WordPress Discussion settings > Other Comment Settings. This will prevent your site to have some fake comments which are generally done by the guest users.

How to disallow comments on specific post/page?

This is useful when it is special post/page where discussion is not required. For example, Submit Listing in Directory based sites.

To do so, edit the page/post from your WordPress admin. Scroll down until you reach “Discussion” section. Uncheck the options: Allow comments and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks.

Don’t see “Discussion” section?

If you don’t find “Discussion” section, click on the “Screen Options” at the top right corner of the screen and make sure that “Discussion” option is enabled there.

Benefits Vs. Drawbacks of Comments in Directory

As comments are an integral part of many WordPress blogs as an effective way to engage users and build community. We often get asked about the comments from number of users like whether its beneficial for the site OR not!

Here in this tutorial we are going to focus on the same topic by comparing both the things as well “Benefits Vs. Drawbacks of Comments in Directory“

Below table will show you all the Benefits and Drawbacks with the relevant points to get more familiar:

Benefits	Drawbacks
Search Engine Optimization: Google looks for keywords in comments as well. Thus informative comments helps in bringing in more SEO.	Spam attack: 1) The very first fear anybody has for comments is spam. I do have too. 2) Directory comes with in-built Captcha which provides a basic security required to prevent the site from spam comments.
True Feedback/Improvisation: Provides your audience inputs. So that you know where to make the improvisation very easily.	Increases Database load: Enormous comments increase database load on the site. Site goes down sometimes due to heavy database load. Keep habit of cleaning your wp_comments table. You can also use akismet plugin for this.
Popularity: Comments on any post/blog/business creates a profile of that blog itself. Thus it does marketing of the site indirectly.	More number of Bogus Comments: When there are more number of comments which are just “Nice”, “This article helped a lot”, etc… it increases the number of comments. But at the same time, it prevents some potential readers to post comment who have some information. Instead they would like to comment on a post where people
Spark Ideas: Comments can give us lots of new ideas or it gives a new start up as well.	Negative feedback: Some negative feedback could show bad impact of your site to others also before their joining.

We hope that this article answers some questions about the Benefits and Drawbacks of comments. Please feel free to send us your comments, questions and feedback here.

Stay tuned for our upcoming continued article on Comments which will give some deeper and coding related information on Comments. See you soon!