Comments and moderation

This article covers the comment submission flow from the reader's perspective, the moderation surface in the admin, the delete + restore semantics, and how comments interact with visibility and translation.

Last updated 2 August 2026postscommentsmoderation

Every published article can accept reader comments — free-text responses submitted from the article page, optionally in reply to another comment, moderated from the admin. The Posts module includes a dedicated Comments tab that aggregates every comment across every article in one moderation table, so an operator can review, delete, or restore comments without hopping between individual post detail pages.

The reader flow

At the bottom of every published article on the public site, below the body and any attachments, sits a comments section. Its structure depends on the site theme, but typically:

A comment form with a name field, an email field, and a free-text comment field. Some themes require the visitor to log in first; others accept anonymous submissions with captcha protection.
A thread of existing comments, sorted chronologically or by "most liked" depending on theme.
A reply button on each comment that opens a nested reply form.

On submission, the comment lands immediately in the article's comment thread (or, on organisations with pre-moderation enabled, waits in a review queue — check with your theme configuration).

The commenter's email address is captured but not shown publicly; it is used only for platform-level notifications (e.g. "your comment received a reply") and admin-side moderation.

The Comments tab in the admin

Click Comments in the tabs across the top of /post. The tab shows a cross-post table of every comment in the organisation:

Column	Content
Post	The title of the article being commented on. Clickable — links to the post detail.
Author	The commenter's display name.
Email	The commenter's email address.
Content	The comment body. Truncated in the row; hover to see full.
Status	Active or deleted.
Date	Relative timestamp of submission.

The table is paginated, filterable by status (active vs deleted), searchable by any of the content fields, and sortable by date.

Moderating a single comment

Right-click any comment row (or click the row's ⋮ menu) and choose an action:

Delete — soft-deletes the comment. A confirmation dialog appears; on confirm the comment is removed from the public thread and marked deleted in the admin. It remains in the database and can be restored.
Restore — for a comment previously deleted, restores it to the public thread.

There is no edit-comment action. If a comment has substantive content that needs correction, delete it and (optionally) contact the commenter via the recorded email to invite a re-submission.

Bulk moderation

Multiple comments can be selected via checkboxes on each row (if your theme supports bulk actions in the comments tab). The bulk-action bar exposes:

Bulk delete — soft-delete every selected comment in one operation.

Bulk restore is not currently a distinct action; restore one at a time.

Comment visibility and the article

Comments respect the article's visibility:

Public article — comments are visible to any reader.
Private / unlisted article — the comment form is present on the article page, but the comments are visible only to whoever can also see the article. Since unlisted articles are readable by anyone with the URL, treat unlisted comments as "URL-secret, not private".
Subscribe-only article — the comment form is subscriber-only; anonymous readers see the article gated. Comments made are visible to other subscribers.
Archived article — the article is not visible to readers, so its comments are not visible either. Comments survive the archive and are visible again if the article is restored.

Comment translation

Comments are NOT translated. They stay in whatever language the commenter submitted them. Multi-locale articles show the same comment thread regardless of which language the reader is on; the comments themselves are unchanged.

This is deliberate — reader voice matters as-is. Auto-translating a commenter's Czech comment into English would introduce errors the commenter never wrote and never approved.

What deletion actually does

Soft-delete, not hard-delete. A deleted comment:

Disappears from the public article page immediately.
Is marked as deleted in the admin table with a red badge.
Its author, email, content, and thread position are all preserved.
Can be restored to the public thread with one right-click.

There is no admin action for hard-delete. If a comment must be permanently expunged (typically for legal reasons — GDPR right to erasure, defamation, illegal content), contact the platform's support flow. The hard-delete operation is audited.

Notifications

Depending on organisation settings, the following events may trigger notifications:

New comment submitted — an email to the article's main author, giving them the option to reply directly.
Reply to your comment — an email to the original commenter (using the email they submitted with) letting them know someone responded.
Comment flagged as spam — an email to configured moderators.

Notification preferences are managed in the organisation's communication settings — outside the Posts module.

Spam and abuse

The platform applies basic anti-spam heuristics before a comment lands (typical honeypots, rate limits, user-agent checks). What survives shows up in the admin table as normal comments. Two practical steps:

Set up moderator notifications so a suspicious comment reaches you promptly rather than waiting for a scan.
Delete decisively. A deleted comment is fully reversible; err on the side of removing anything that reads like spam or abuse. The commenter is not notified of the deletion.

For persistent abuse from a specific email or IP, contact support for a platform-level block.

Public API exposure

The public API exposes:

commentsCount on the article list and detail — the number of active (non-deleted) comments.
/api/v1/post/{id}/comments — the full comment thread for an article, in chronological order, with author name (but not email — email is admin-only).

Integrators building custom article renderers can use this to present a comments section outside the platform's own theme. See API integration.

Tips

Reply from your admin identity, not from the anonymous form. If your main author account is set up, log in via the reply link in the notification email and post as your named self. Anonymous replies from an editor read poorly.
Delete spam quickly. A single unreplied spam comment attracts more spam; the platform's heuristics work better when the visible thread is clean.
Do not delete disagreement. A reader who disagrees with an article and says so politely is a signal of engagement. Delete only when the comment is spam, abuse, or otherwise policy-violating — not when it makes the editor uncomfortable.
Consider closing very old articles' comments. Once a post is a few years old, drive-by spam outweighs new legitimate discussion. Some themes let you close comments per-post; check your configuration.

Post management overview
Post editor
Reader feedback — the star-rating companion.
Visibility and lifecycle — how article visibility affects comment visibility.
API integration