One important feature of WordPress blogs is allowing you to accept comments on your blog posts.

Allowing comments can be great as it creates more links to your blog and website which can improve your SEO rankings. Unfortunately, it also allows robots and spammers to post on your website. But, you may not always be pleased with the self-promotions and spam your posts receive.

Follow these steps to easily moderate comments and trackbacks and to disable these functions if desired.

1. Log into your WordPress administrative panel with your username and password.
2. From the “Dashboard” select “Settings: Discussion”. (You will see the window displayed below.
3. Under “Default Article Settings” is a checkbox where you can allow or deny permission for people to post comments.

If you choose to permit comments, the controls further down the page will allow you to control who can add comments and to blacklist spam IP addresses.
You can also set how long a post will allow comments and other useful controls.

Most important, and often overlooked – You must Save your changes – per the blue button in the lower left section of the dashboard.