Did you know you can moderate WordPress comments quickly with WordPress Shortcuts and enabling selected WordPress options. I have been moderating the millions of spam and not spam comments the usual way by clicking the link choices at the bottom of comments.
But there is a better and faster way to do this.
1. Enable Keyword Shortcuts
Before you get started, the single most important step is enabling keyword shortcuts. This option is disabled by default. After logging in to WordPress Admin – Go to Users > Your Profile. Enable keyword shortcuts for comment moderation.
Now you are set to use WordPress shortcuts while moderating comments.
2. Navigating Comments
You will love the fact that the keys are similar to those you use in Gmail or Feedly.
- j – select next comment
- k – select previous comment.
If you visit the comments page, no comment is selected. Press j to select first comment and easily browse down.
3. Moderate Comments
You will find that 4 quick shortcuts will let you quickly deal with a long comment moderation queue
- a – approve comment
- s – move to spam
- d – delete comment
- z – restore comment
What you will note is that you can easily use the a,s,d,z keys with your left hand while jump comments using j,k with your right hand. Practicing this has enabled me to moderate comments with incredible speed which was not possible earlier.
4. Comment Actions
What if you need to interact with the comment like edit it, or post a reply etc. There keys for that too, but they are not so easily accessible as the above keys.
- r – reply comment
- q – quick edit
- u – unapprove comment
5. Power Edit Multiple Comments
Now some people like to bulk edit comments and perform comment moderation even faster. Well there are some nifty ways for that too. But first you will need to manually tick the checkboxes for the comments you want to bulk edit. Once you have ticked the comments to edit, use these keyboard shortcuts along with pressing the SHIFT key.
- Shift+a – approve comments
- Shift+s – move to spam
- Shift+d – delete comments
- Shift+u – unapprove comments
- Shift+z – restore comments
I now am able to moderate WordPress comments super quick, how about you?