Comments & Moderation

Pubvana includes a threaded comment system with admin moderation, hCaptcha spam protection, and rate limiting.

TL;DR

• Admin → Comments — approve, spam, or trash comments from one place.
• Users must be logged in to comment (no anonymous comments).
• hCaptcha validation protects the comment form (configure keys at Admin → Settings → Spam Protection).
• Actions require the comments.moderate permission.

Details

Comment System Overview

Comments appear at the bottom of single post pages, rendered via the active theme's comment templates. Comments are threaded — readers can reply to any top-level comment to create nested conversations up to one level deep.

Only registered, logged-in users can submit comments. Anonymous commenting is not supported. This eliminates a significant portion of spam without requiring additional configuration.

Rate Limiting

To prevent comment flooding, each user is limited to 5 comments per 10-minute window. If the limit is exceeded, the comment form returns a rate-limit error and the comment is not saved. The rate limit resets after the 10-minute window expires.

hCaptcha Protection

When hCaptcha Site Key and Secret Key are configured at Admin → Settings → Spam Protection, a hCaptcha challenge widget appears in the comment form. The submission is validated server-side against the hCaptcha API. Comments submitted without a valid hCaptcha response are rejected.

To configure hCaptcha:

1. Create a free account at hcaptcha.com.
2. Register your site to get a Site Key (public) and Secret Key (private).
3. Enter both keys in Admin → Settings → Spam Protection.

Comment Statuses

Each comment has one of four statuses:

By default, comments from users with the comments.bypass_moderation permission are automatically approved. All other comments go to pending and require moderator approval.

Admin Moderation Page

Navigate to Admin → Comments. The page shows a paginated list of all comments filterable by status using tabs:

• All — every comment in the system.
• Pending — comments awaiting approval.
• Approved — currently visible comments.
• Spam — flagged spam comments.
• Trash — soft-deleted comments.

Moderation Actions

For each comment you can perform the following actions:

• Approve — sets status to approved. The comment immediately becomes visible on the post page.
• Spam — sets status to spam. Removes from public view. The comment is retained for inspection.
• Trash — sets status to trash. Soft-deletes the comment. Recoverable until permanently deleted.
• Delete — permanently removes the comment from the database. This action is irreversible.

Bulk actions are available: select multiple comments and apply the same action to all at once.

Permissions

Moderating comments requires the comments.moderate permission. Admins have this permission by default. Editors can be granted it via role configuration. Authors and Subscribers cannot moderate comments.