Regarding Comments

| posted in: life 


It turns out it is possible to configure Wordpress to make leaving comments almost impossible. Without realizing it, I had done just that here at zanshin.net. The configuration has been updated, so any one should now be able to leave a comment or three, if they so choose.

General Options: Membership

On the Options page, for the Membership setting, I had “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked. It turns out that this required anyone desiring to leave a comment to register themselves with my site. Not a bad idea, in and of itself, but one that created a roadblock. Prospective commenters were presented with a log in page, no instructions, and a tiny “Register” link to follow. By turning this option off, visitors now only have to provide a name and email address in order to comment. And I still, through the Discussion Options, get to moderate comments before they appear on my site.

The lesson reinforced here is to test everything and assume nothing. Had I not asked Sibylle to leave a comment (to test a feature of my site’s statistical package), I never would have known that my combination of configuration choices had made commenting next to impossible.

Author's profile picture

Mark H. Nichols

I am a husband, cellist, code prole, nerd, technologist, and all around good guy living and working in fly-over country. You should follow me on Mastodon.