Comments drown in spam, moderation queue overflows.
Akismet plus moderation settings clears 95 percent. For the rest, disabling comments where they're not relevant is the honest option.
Try this first
- 1Activate Akismet (free for SMB up to a volume) with an API key. Filters most into spam directly.
- 2Settings > Discussion: turn on 'Comment must be manually approved' for first-time users. First comment moderated, then auto-approved.
- 3Close comments after X days. Settings > Discussion > 'Automatically close comments on posts older than 30 days'. Old posts attract bots, not people.
- 4Disable comments on pages where they don't add value. Company info, contact, service pages: comments off.
- 5Track which spam comments slip through Akismet. Patterns (IP range, language) can be blocked via .htaccess or Cloudflare WAF.
- 6Consider a commenting alternative (Disqus, linking to native Twitter/X discussions) when internal moderation eats hours weekly.
When to bring us in
Building a community site or news platform with real comment flow? Dedicated tools (Disqus, Hyvor, Commento) or a community engineer beats WP-native builds.
See also
- WordPress, plugins and theme have gone 6+ months without updatesOut-of-date WP is the number-one entry for malware. Don't just hit 'update all', back up first.
- Theme update broke the layout or threw a fatal errorThemes overwrite custom CSS on update unless you use a child theme.
- WordPress shows a blank screen after a plugin install or updateWSOD (white screen of death) is usually one crashing plugin. You isolate it.
None of the above fits?
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