Step 12 - Discussion WordPress Settings

You may or may not want to have comments on your site. But if you have comments your site will be spammed.  It then becomes a case of how well you deal with the spam.

To minimise comment spam and other types of spam, make sure you've installed the Cloudflare plugin mentioned on my WordPress plugin recommendations page.

In the case where I allow comments, I prefer to set all comments to manual approval. However this will turn into a lot of work if your site receives large numbers of comments.

I think comments are less expected than they used to be in the past, and really are just an invitation to spam. Overall, my advice would be to switch them off altogether.

Go To Dashboard → Settings → Discussion.

Default Post Settings

• Attempt To Notify Any Blogs Linked To From The Post
  Whether you decide to allow comments or not, uncheck this box. It's a terrible idea.
  
• Allow Link Notifications From Other Blogs On New Posts
  Whether you decide to allow comments or not, also uncheck this box, because it's another terrible idea.
  
• Allow People To Submit Comments On New Posts
  If you want to allow comments, check this box. If you want to disallow comments, uncheck this box. Please note that unchecking this box will not remove or prevent commenting on existing posts, it will only disallow comments on new posts. Setting this before your site goes lives means there will never be comments. Comments used to be cool back in the day, but now they are an overhang from a bygone era. My advice is to kill them off by unchecking this box.

Before A Comment Appears

If you are allowing comments, make sure one of the following options is checked.  If you end up getting a lot of comments this setting will be a lot of work though.

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

The other options on this page are up to you.  However if you have disallowed comment the remaining options are not applicable and you can ignore them.