Decide whether every comment should require approval or whether previously approved contributors may post more freely. Consider the volume of discussion, staffing and the sensitivity of the topic. Explain the site's moderation expectations where readers can find them.

Review any anti-spam plugin separately, because its classification and the WordPress approval workflow can interact.

1. Open Settings > Discussion and review the options controlling what happens before a comment appears.
2. Enable the intended manual-approval requirement and save.
3. Open Comments and inspect pending submissions in context with the post they address.
4. Approve appropriate comments, classify genuine spam correctly and move unwanted non-spam items to Trash when that matches your policy.
5. Check the public post to verify the approved comment appears as intended.

Read the full submission and inspect links cautiously without opening suspicious destinations unnecessarily. A plausible first sentence can hide an unrelated promotional link. Conversely, criticism is not automatically spam and should be evaluated against your published moderation standards.

Avoid editing a reader's comment in a way that changes its meaning without a clear policy. Remove accidentally posted private information through a deliberate privacy response rather than approving it because the rest of the comment is useful.

Test a controlled comment from a signed-out session and confirm it enters the expected queue. Check moderator notifications and remove test comments afterward.

If comments appear immediately despite the policy, inspect per-plugin behaviour, user privileges and the saved discussion settings. If the form is absent, check the post's discussion setting and template rather than assuming moderation disabled it.

Schedule regular queue reviews and keep enough authorised moderators available. An approval requirement only protects the public discussion effectively when the people reviewing it understand the site's content and can distinguish abuse from legitimate participation.

• Configuring comment moderation and disallowed words
• Distinguishing spam comments from genuine customer feedback
• Closing comments on selected posts
• Changing a user's role without losing content ownership

• WordPress: Settings Discussion Screen
• WordPress: Comments Screen