WordPress Comments Website Limitations – What You Should Know
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) used by millions of websites across the globe. It boasts a large and vibrant community of developers, designers, and bloggers who collaborate to make the platform even better. One of the major reasons behind WordPress’ success is its powerful comment system. However, just because WordPress has a great comment system doesn’t mean that every website built on the platform will benefit equally from the feature. In fact, there are some notable limitations that you should know about.
No Follow Backlinks
One of the unique things about WordPress’ comment system is that it lets commenters leave comments with no follow links attached. Essentially, this means that if you leave a comment on a blog post, the link to your website will not appear in the comment’s comment field. This may not seem like a major drawback, but if you’re a site owner and you want to see your website’s content reach as many people as possible, this type of setup could be a hindrance. Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem: if you install the Akismet spam filter (highly recommended), all the spam that comes with no follow links will be removed from your site. This effectively fixes the problem, and allows you to have comment links with or without follow tags depending on your needs.
One Per Post
Another issue that can arise due to WordPress’ comment system is that of limited one-on-one engagement. Despite the fact that comments are intended to be a place for open discussion, many websites choose to engage with their audience only one-on-one. This could be via email or by displaying their name next to the comment. While this may not seem like a problem at first, it can become one if you have a large comment section on your site. Having one-on-one conversations in the comment section won’t do any good if your ultimate goal is for your website’s content to be shared as much as possible. In this case, having multiple commenters leave thoughtful responses to one another’s comments would be beneficial.
Shortened Domain Names
Another thing that can happen if you use WordPress’ default comment settings is that your domain name will be shortened to fit the comment’s character limit. For example, if you leave a comment using your Tumblr account, the domain name will be shortened to fit the character limit. This is generally something that will not happen if you’ve chosen to leave a comment using your Google account, as Google allows for longer URLs. If you leave a comment on a site using your Google account and find that your domain has been shortened, you can let Google know (instructions on how to do this can be found here – https://support.google.com/blogger/topic/2734062). Shortened domain names can be fixed by contacting the site admins and asking them to change your website’s DNS settings to point to the full URL of your blog/site (you can use a tool like Google’s Domains to find the IP address of the site you want to connect to).
These are some pretty significant limitations to keep in mind if you decide to use WordPress’ comment feature. While they may not seem like a problem at first, after you’ve experienced the ups and downs of using the popular platform, you may wish that you knew sooner how little control you had over some of the aspects that make up your website.
For more information on these limitations, be sure to check out the resource centers below.