Comments

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Comments are messages that your audience can leave as a response to your blog material.  When commentary is posted by a general user, by default it goes into a moderation queue to be approved by an Editor or Administrator on your blogsite.

Comment Notification

You’ll be notified in a few different ways when new comments land in your queue.

If you happen to be within your Dashboard as a new comment arrives you’ll see a visual indicator next to the Comments menu item.  Additionally, if the Recent Comments Screen Option is enabled, you’ll see list of comments highlighted in yellow that need to be approved.

If you don’t happen to be on your blogsite when comments arrive, you will also be notified via e-mail.

Approving Comments

To approve a comment, just hover your mouse a bit below the comment teaser text and a menu list of options will appear.  Click on the Approve option.

After approving the comment, the yellow background color will change and the comment will be visible on the Site View of your blog.

Replying to Comments

There are a couple of different ways that you can reply to comments: directly from your Dashboard or from the Site View itself.

To reply to comments from your Dashboard, just hover below the comment teaser text and then click on the Reply option.  A small text editor will appear beneath the comment.  Enter your reply and then click the Submit Reply button.  Your reply will then be posted in the comments list and will also appear on the Site View blog entry.

To reply to comments from the Site View, locate the blog entry with the comment you wish to respond to and click on the Comment link at the bottom of the blog entry.  Once within the blog entry, just scroll down to the bottom of the screen, enter a reply in the text field, and click the Submit Comment button.  After submitting the reply it will be posted in comments list at the top of the text field.

Deleting Comments

To delete comments, from your Dashboard view, just hover below the comment teaser text and click on the Delete option.  A window will pop up to verify whether you really want to delete the item or not.  Click the OK button.  The comment will be deleted.  Note: if you have replied to a comment that has been deleted, your comment will not automatically be deleted with the originating commentary.  You will probably want to clean up any responses.

Marking Spam

Spam is defined as unsolicited, unwanted, indiscriminate bulk messages that appear in electronic messaging systems such as within blog comments, forums, and e-mail.  To mark a comment as spam, hover below the comment teaser text and click on the Spam option.  The comment will disappear and a notification that something has been marked as spam will appear up in the Right Now Screen Option panel.

Marking spam comments as such, versus deleting them outright, is helpful within the blogs.oregonstate.edu WordPress system as we utilize Akismet, a plugin that helps to report and handle spam content.

Unmarking Spam


If something has been accidentally marked as spam, click on the Spam link in the Right Now Screen Option panel.  This will open the Edit Comment screen.  Select the comment in question, choose “Approve” from the Bulk Actions drop down box, and then click the Apply button.  The comment will be restored.

Content

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The term “content” is a generic term that applies to all different forms of media that are utilized within a WordPress blogsite.

In WordPress, content is broken down into five categories:

  • Comments
  • Links
  • Media
  • Pages
  • Posts

In the following sub-sections we’ll focus on how to use each feature.

Using WordPress

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WordPress contains a couple of main categories of use which may or may not be available to you, depending upon the level of permissions you possess on a given blogsite.

Most obvious is the ability to post and manage content.  Most users who are registered on a WordPress blogsite have the capability to impact content at some level.

If you are a blog owner, though, you are automatically the Administrator of your own blogsite.  This particular role has the ability to not only post content, but to also configure many different site settings and manage users.

We’ll take a look at both the Content and the Configuration group of features within this section.

Changing Interfaces

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So what, exactly, is an interface?  In plain terms, where computers and people are concerned, an interface is where a person comes in contact with a screen to either enter or retrieve information.  WordPress has a couple of different interfaces.  There’s the Site View, which is the side of your blog that your readers will come in contact with.  There’s also the Dashboard View, which is the side of your blog that you, as a blog writer, work on.

The Site View

When you first go to blogs.oregonstate.edu, you will be greeted with a Site View of the system home page.  If you are not already logged into ONID, click on the Log in link in the navigation menu to log in to the ONID system.

The Dashboard View

After logging into ONID, click the Site Admin link.  You will be redirected to your Dashboard.  This interface looks quite a bit different from the Site View.  This area is where all of the administration and writing for your site is done.