WordPress and Moderated Comments
One thing that I’ve been noticing over the past few days that certain students have mysteriously been getting their comments approved without me seeing them and I know their teacher has not been seeing them. Upon further research, I’ve discovered a few glitches in the WordPress MU software when it comes to comments.
The most concerning one is that even though in one of the settings we always click that “An administrator must always approve the comment,” that really is not the case. All that does is stop the comment from appearing instantly. It then goes to the comments page, waiting to be approved. Which is great, but authors and contributors have access to that page and can approve their comments! Obviously that shreds our pretense of safety if anyone can leave a comment and it can be approved without any adult seeing it. Worse, the students are able to see the commenters email address in that comments section.
So after a lot of research tonight, I’ve come across this plugin which solves the problem in a very inelegant but effective fashion. Now when an author or a contributor tries to get to the Comments page, it goes to a VERY simple page that tells them they’re not allowed there.
I wish there was a better way, but, for now, that’s the way we’re going to have to do it.
Mrs. Hulburt Said,
September 16, 2008 @ 6:21 am
Do we need to do this for each of our blogs or has it already been done? Also…I am getting 2 emails for every comment that is posted on my kids blogs-any ideas how I can correct that?
Dean Mattson Said,
September 16, 2008 @ 7:12 am
It’s already been activated for all the blogs. For dealing with the two emails, there’s two settings under Settings>Discussion that deal with email. Try unchecking the one that says “Anyone posts a comment.”
Mrs. Beaulieu Said,
September 17, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
Okay, Mrs. Hulburt, you beat me to the punch. I was going to ask the same question, but I can see that it’s been answered!
Mrs. Hulburt Said,
September 18, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
Bad news is that I can’t approve comments from the email link now though…I have to log in through my site and then visit the blogs. When I click on the email link I get the message from above. Quick fix?
Dean Mattson Said,
September 20, 2008 @ 10:35 am
What if you’re logged in first and then you click the email link? Does it work then?
Mrs. Beaulieu Said,
September 21, 2008 @ 7:44 am
Wow! I never even tried to approve comments from the e-mail link. I always thought I had to be logged in, so I would delete the e-mails and then go in search of new comments. Remember Dean, when way back when…I would say, “Where do I find the posts and comments in order to approve them?” and you would say, “They’re there.” We’ll I’ve got that part down, so I haven’t had any problems approving comments…even those I get by e-mail from last year’s students!
Mrs. Hulburt Said,
September 22, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
I’ll try it and see…will let you know!
Two more WPMU plugins for K12 | openedweb.com Said,
February 17, 2009 @ 11:42 am
[...] that student comments were appearing without his having reviewed them and wrote about in his blog. He came up with a plugin that blocks access to the comments page. In looking for new plugins for [...]