Yes, you can manage the comments from WordPress Admin Panel. The “Comments” option is right under the “Pages” and above “Appearance” from the main left column menu.
I strongly caution all to moderate all comments and to do this to stop spam links:
These settings are at Admin Dashboard>Settings>Discussion
‘Other comment settings’>check ‘Comment author must fill out name and e-mail’
You can force a user to login to comment also here.
If you do so make sure that the default user is a ‘subscriber‘ at Admin Dashboard>Settings>General
‘Before a comment appears’>check ‘An administrator must always approve the comment’
‘Comment Moderation’>’Hold a comment in the queue if it contains’>ONE>or more links. (A common characteristic of comment spam is a large number of hyperlinks.)
Add this to the ‘comments blacklist’:
www
http
url
ftp
sex
viagra
drugs
any others (swears etc.)
Spammers can and will add comment spam links to really bad sites if the comments are not moderated properly, causing your site to be blacklisted.
BTW, I recommend using this plugin, the Spam Destroyer
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/spam-destroyer/
comment spams stopped after installing it on my sites. Don’t have to do anything else. You can find the article about it at
http://wpmu.org/spam-destroyer-really-works-to-kill-wordpress-spam/
My above works great with no plugin – any schmuck that wants to include a link will be sent to spam…simple easy – set it and forget it – (clean up spam though on a reg basis)
@seacoast
Yes, I agree the solution works great and highly recommended. The only problem is that a lot of my clients don’t want the hassle of dealing with blacklists :(, so I tested this plugin, but worked great, at least for now…
I understand there can be a time when plugins are useful, I just found too many that add issues…not to mention poor theme design – a combination that leads to so many requiring assistance due to hacks.
