WordPress config: comments, permalinks, trackbacks

[vincenttan]

Hi everyone,

I have some questions regarding the use of WordPress.

1. What are the recommended options for comments?
Things like allow only registered users to comment and requirement of comment moderation. There's quite a few checkboxes and dropdown selection options in WordPress.

2. Any suggestions for permalink formats?
I just found out how to set permalink options for my posts. I'm using the YYYY/MM/hyphenated-title format currently. Should I use a custom format?

3. What should I do with the trackback comments from my own posts?
When I put a link into one of my posts (post A) to another post (post B ), I get a comment on post B. It looks like a shortened version of post A. Should I delete it? Should I approve it, and leave it on the post's comments?

I appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

Vincent
The polymath programmer

[Harrison]

Hi Vincent,

Here are what i set for my blog, I hope it can help you:

1. At this moment, I let everyone give their comments in blog without registeration. Since the volume of the comments are not much, I welcomed more people to comment. However, I'm facing some spam problems and I will recommend you to use spam karma to filter the spam comments. This is a wordpress plugin and very easy to be used.

2. Currently I'm using /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/, however, I found that /%postname%/ is a good choice as the date do noting in SEO

3. Usually I left the trackbacks there. So when visitors read my article, they can click on the trackback and read the other.

Just some of my opinions.

Thank You For Your Time
Harrison

[GoddessCarlie]

1. especially while you are new, let anyone be able to comment. If you require registration - well, I don't mind commenting on blogs but if I have to take the time to register I must really want to say something. Make it easier for people to interact. There are lots of spam filters out there.

2. I use the same format as Harrison. I don't think it matters as long as you have the post title in there. The post title is good for SEO, where as if it is just numbers, well it doesn't mean anything.

3. I use a plugin called "No Self Pings" to stop my own track back comments. If you want people to visit like articles, I think the related post plugin would be more effective than the trackbacks.

[vincenttan]

Thanks for your input. You have no idea how much this means to me.

I'm an IT professional, and after a day of left brain logic thinking and right brain creative thinking, it's hard to go home and squeeze even more out of my brain to write a pillar article.

I've been pulling every single motivational trick I've read to keep myself going.

Thanks for your help! Now I'm going back to that pillar article of mine...

[kathiemt]

I don't make people register but I do moderate every single comment. I have Akismet in place so about 98% of comment spam is held up anyway, but there have been odd occasions when someone has tried to post a comment that is distasteful - not spam - but not welcome either, so I reserve the right to approve all comments first. Since I'm at my computer every day anyway, it's only a few hours overnight, or when I'm at a meeting, that comments are held before being published, very rarely any longer.

I have the permalinks for most of my blogs set to the post title but my main blog I haven't been able to do that because I have also got MS FrontPage working on the same webspace for my main website (the blog is attached to that site) and Frontpage overwrites the htaccess file - I've not been able to find any fixes for this, although I've asked at the Wordpress support forums and tried other places. So I'm stuck with the numbered posts - the blog is now over 2 years old. But, for SEO purposes the post names are preferable for the permalinks.

I always approve and leave the trackbacks there - it helps people to follow through the threads.

[AmyL]

Okay, since I'm still bumbling through all this I just now figured out how to set the permalink mode to pretty. I have several posts that are already saved in an 'ugly' format, and now my archive command won't work. Soooooo, can I go in and hack the permalinks on the old posts to match the new format?? Where do I do that? And aren't you proud of me for knowing how to correctly use the term hack with regard to my blog?

[vincenttan]

Hi Amy,

When I figured out how to set the permalinks (because I thought the default settings looked a bit "off". I'm an IT professional, so I guess it's in my instincts or something...), I already had a few posts with links back to some of my other posts.

I was relatively new to blogging, so I set aside some time, and went through every single one of my posts to change the self-referential link from default link format (something like "/?p=123") to my preferred permalink format.

As for the permalink for your post itself, I think WordPress automatically sets it for you. Maybe some more experienced blogger can shed some light?

I also just installed the "Subscribe to comment" plugin.

[AmyL]

I'm happy to work on the old posts as there aren't that many. Where do I make the change to the self referential link?

[vincenttan]

When I say "self-referential", I mean one of your blog post has a link to another one of your blog post.

After saving your preferred permalink format, all your individual blog posts should have a unique URL. Unfortunately, any links you created in your posts with the old format will stay in that format (the "/?p=123" kind).

So what you can do is have two browser windows open, one in your WordPress account where you write your posts, the other on your blog site.

Then go through every one of your posts in your WordPress browser window (it's the "Manage" tab), and when you find a link in a post that refers to another of your posts, go to the blog site browser window, and click on that post's header (it should be a link).

Copy the newly formatted permalink URL of that post, go back to your WordPress window, and update that link with it.

I hope the explanation's clear enough. I only had a handful of posts with links to my other posts, so it wasn't too tedious.

[AmyL]

Ah. Ok. I understand that part. And thank you. I don't think I have any self-referential links yet. I don't even have 15 posts yet. Well, there are a ton in draft but I was holding them to post over time and I wanted to settle the permalink issue before putting any more out.

I guess my original question is still can I update the permalink structure of the old posts somehow? When I switch to the pretty links, then none of my archives work because the command is then looking for articles tagged by date, and the original content doesn't contain dates in the permalink. Is it a matter of going into the database and hacking those links? Will that mess up anything else if I do that?

Thanks!!