Chapter 23. Managing Comments
One of the hallmarks of blogging is the ability of visitors to leave comments on what's been written, and because WordPress was developed as blogging software it has an extensive comments system. In this lesson I show you how WordPress handles comments and some ways you can use them outside of a blogging context.
Allow Comments or Not?
When you're writing a blog, having people comment on your posts is an important part of the blog experience. You want to open up a dialogue with your visitors and even between your visitors. You might choose to close off comments after a certain period of time, but virtually no one with a blog would think about getting rid of comments altogether.
It's a different story when you're building a non-blog site with WordPress. There are far fewer places on the site where you would want people to comment. There's no particular need to allow visitors to comment on the About Us page of the Island Travel site, for example. On the other hand, I want people to comment on posts about a particular travel destination or a piece of news about the travel industry. That's where the individual comment control comes in handy, and I show you how to set that up in the next section.
The important point is that you need to consider the purposes of your website and how the WordPress comment function might fit in with those purposes. Every site will be different and every area on your site needs to be considered separately as well.
Admin Settings for ...
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