Managing Comments in WordPress/Zippy Courses

Discussion is an important part of many online courses. Sometimes, these discussions are in-depth and detailed, which requires a forum or discussion group to explore fully. For these types of discussions, we recommend integrating your Zippy Courses site with bbPress. However, if you want to make it simple for your students to leave some basic feedback, or ask some basic questions, the WordPress comments system is a great tool for increasing engagement.

Zippy Courses uses the commenting features within WordPress to manage your comments, so for those who have managed a WordPress site or blog before, this system will seem instantly familiar. However, if you’re new to WordPress comments, this guide can explain how to get started. Or, if comments aren’t right for your course, we’ll show you how to disable these comments completely.

Enabling/Disabling Comments Sitewide

To enable comments on your whole site, first go to Settings -> Discussion in WordPress.

This page includes a variety of options for comments and comment moderation. Feel free to review these options and set them however would work best for your course.

The most important option on this page is the checkbox marked Allow people to post comments on new articles. This option determines if new posts, pages, units and lessons in your course will have comments enabled or disabled by default. If you want to enable comments, simply check this box and press Save Changes.

Tip: Don’t like the default “Mystery Person” Avatar? You can set a different default avatar on your Discussion settings page!

Enabling/Disabling Comments on a Specific Page

Your discussion settings will be automatically applied to any pages you create going forward. However, if you have already created some pages, or need to override your default settings for a specific page, WordPress offers this option as well.

To override your comments settings on an individual page, first navigate to the editor window for your post, lesson or page. Below the Excerpt box in your editor, you will see a box labeled Discussion. Check or uncheck Allow comments in this box to open or close your page’s comments.

If you ever want to lock comments on a lesson, you can uncheck the Allow Comments box to prevent any future discussion. This will not delete any existing comments.

Don’t see the “Discussion” box?

If you don’t see the Discussion box in your editor window, it may be hidden. To show the box, scroll to the top of the page and select Screen Options in the top-right corner.

Then, under Show on screen, select the Discussion and Comments boxes. These boxes will now appear on all of your comment pages.

Managing Comments

You can view all comments from users under the Comments menu in your WordPress dashboard. You can also view comments for a single lesson or page by in that page’s editor.

You can set your own moderation rules in the Discussion settings in WordPress. You can require that students must be logged in to comment, or that all comments must be moderated. You are also able to unapproved or delete a comment at any time by hovering over the comment and unapproving, editing, or deleting a comment.

WordPress and Zippy Courses give you the tools you need to build your own online community and discussions. With a well moderated and engaged commenting system, you can build your class of students into an engaged and vibrant community.