Moderate comments and reviews

How to triage comments on your blog posts and keep the conversation healthy

The Discussions area is where every comment that visitors leave on your site ends up before it appears publicly. Reach for it when a notification tells you a new comment is waiting, when spam comes in and needs cleaning up, or when you want to reply to a customer question directly under their comment. This walkthrough covers the full moderation flow — triage, bulk cleanup, and admin replies — plus a set of important things not to do on this version of SGEN.

What is this for?

The Discussions screen at /sg-admin/discussions/ is the moderation queue for every comment (and, if you enable reviews, every review) your visitors leave. Each submission shows up as a row with the author, the comment text, the post it was left on, a status, and a timestamp. Status starts at Pending; from there you decide whether it goes Approved (visible publicly), Spam (hidden, flagged), or Trash (hidden, recoverable). You can also reply to a comment as the site owner — your reply threads under the original and carries an admin context so readers know it is from you.

Where this lives

Left navigation → Discussions. You get two submenu items: All Discussions (the moderation queue) and Settings (which content types accept comments, whether login is required, reply depth, and so on).

Good use cases

Example 1: Daily moderation sweep. Acme Coffee Roasters gets a handful of comments overnight. Open Discussions, click the Pending tab, and work through the queue top to bottom — tabs show counts at a glance (Pending: 2, Approved: 4, Spam: 1). Approve the real ones, mark obvious spam as Spam, and if a comment needs a direct answer, open it and hit Reply. A healthy site might take five minutes in the morning.

Example 2: Spam surge response. A drive-by spam wave hit the Acme Coffee Roasters blog overnight and 17 rows of promotional junk are waiting in Pending. Click Pending, tick the master checkbox in the header (selects every row on the current page), pick Mark as Spam from the Bulk actions dropdown, and click Apply. Result: Pending drops from 17 to 0, Spam rises from 1 to 18. If any slipped through to Approved, switch to the Approved tab, search for a keyword like "crypto" or "followers," bulk-move matches to Spam. Then empty the Trash tab with bulk Delete Permanently — but read the orphan-replies warning first.

Example 3: Reply to a customer question publicly. Grace left a question about the Canvas Tote Bag under your product post and you want to reply so other readers see the exchange. Click View on Grace's row, scroll to the Reply in thread textarea, type your answer, and click Reply. Your response threads under Grace's comment on the public post and shows as coming from the site admin.

After you click Reply, visitors to that post see the thread immediately on the public page:

What NOT to use this for

This version of SGEN has a few specific behaviors that will catch you out if you do not know about them. Read these before you start moderating — some of them matter a lot.

1. Do not use SG-Builder for blog posts you want comments on.

This is the single most important thing to know on this version. SGEN ships two ways to build a blog post: the classic Text Editor (a rich-text box inside the post edit screen) and the drag-and-drop SG-Builder page builder. On this version, blog posts built with the SG-Builder template do not render the comment form or approved comments on the public post at all. Admin moderation still works — you will see pending comments in the queue — but visitors cannot leave comments, and approved ones never appear under the post.

If you need comments on a blog post, pick Text Editor as the template when you create or edit it. If you already have an SG-Builder post where you wanted comments, either re-create the post using Text Editor, or accept that the comment section for that post will not render until this is fixed in a future release.

The image below shows what visitors see on each template — a Text-Editor post has a comment list and a comment form under the body; an SG-Builder post has nothing.

2. Do not reply to spam or trashed comments.

The admin reply form will happily let you type a reply under any comment, including ones you have marked as Spam or Trash. On this version, your reply is always saved as an Approved comment — which is fine when the parent is approved, but creates a weird situation when the parent is spam or trash. If the parent ever comes back (you change your mind and approve it later, or the comment is restored), your reply appears publicly under the spam content. And if the parent stays gone, your reply sits in the system with nothing to attach to.

The safe rule: if a comment is spam, just mark it Spam and move on. Do not reply. If you genuinely want the discussion to continue, first approve the parent, then reply underneath.

3. Do not permanently delete a comment thread that has replies.

Permanent-delete is available only from the Trash tab (for comments you have previously trashed). On this version, if you permanently delete a comment that has replies underneath it, the replies remain in the system — they survive as leftover rows whose parent comment no longer exists. On the public post they will not display (the public tree filters out orphaned replies), but they still occupy storage and clutter your admin count totals.

If you want to fully remove a thread, delete the replies one by one first (from each reply's detail view), and then delete the parent last. Treat permanent-delete as the final step, not the first.

4. Do not rely on "no activity log" for compliance.

Approving a comment, marking spam, and similar status transitions ARE recorded in the admin activity log. But bulk Delete Permanently is not logged on this version — there is no audit trail of which comments an admin purged. If you need a record (for a compliance review or a deletion audit), export the list before you bulk-delete — either screenshot the Trash tab or copy the rows to a spreadsheet first.

5. Do not rely on the bell icon in the top navigation for notifications.

You may have seen screenshots showing a small bell icon near the top right that lights up when new comments come in. On this version of SGEN the bell is not rendering — treat it as missing. Go to the notifications inbox directly at /sg-admin/notifications/ to see pending comments, or just open Discussions → Pending and look at the tab count.

6. Do not disable the Discussion Scope for all content types when only one is noisy.

Settings → Discussion Scope controls which page types accept comments at all — blog posts, events, products, custom objects. If your blog comments are overwhelming, it is tempting to turn off Discussion Scope entirely to quiet things down. Don't. You will also silence events, products, and any custom types that were fine. Turn off just the noisy type (usually Blog) and leave the rest alone.

Before you start

• You are signed in to SGEN as an admin.
• Discussion Scope is turned on for at least one content type under Discussions → Settings. On a fresh install, this may be off by default — check Settings first if no comments are appearing from your visitors.
• You have at least one published blog post (or equivalent content) that visitors have commented on. If your site is brand new, you may see an empty queue until the first visitor comment lands.

Where to go

1. Open the left navigation menu and click Discussions. The submenu expands to show All Discussions and Settings.
2. All Discussions lands you on the moderation queue. Five tabs run across the top: All, Pending, Approved, Spam, Trash. Each tab has a count badge so you see at a glance what is waiting.
3. If you have zero comments across the whole site, every tab shows 0 and the table displays "No discussions found." That is expected on a quiet or brand-new site.

Steps

1. Scan the Pending tab

Click Pending. Every row here is waiting for your decision. Each row shows the author (name + email), the comment text, the post it belongs to, and a date. Click View on the author's name to open the full detail — including the visitor's IP and browser — if you need more context.

2. Approve real comments, spam the obvious junk

For each row, use the inline action links underneath the comment text:

• Approve (or via the dropdown on the detail view) — publishes the comment on the public post.
• Spam — marks as spam and hides from the public post.
• Trash — soft-delete; hides from public but keeps in the Trash tab for recovery.
• Hold — moves back to Pending if you approved or spammed it by mistake.

Click Apply-style bulk moderation when you have many at once: tick row checkboxes (or the master checkbox in the table header to select everything on the page), pick an action from the Bulk actions dropdown, and click Apply.

3. Reply as admin when appropriate

To reply publicly under a comment, click View on the row. Scroll to the Reply in thread textarea at the bottom. Type your response and click Reply. The reply appears immediately under the comment on the public post with an admin context, and it comes from your admin account (not the visitor's name).

Keep replies to approved comments — do not reply to spam or trashed rows (see the "What NOT to use this for" section above).

4. Clean up the Spam and Trash tabs periodically

Spam piles up. Trash piles up. Neither hurts much sitting there, but once a month open the Spam tab, scan for anything that slipped in by mistake, then bulk-select everything and Move to Trash. Open the Trash tab and bulk-delete to finish the cleanup — but read the orphan-replies warning above first and delete any replies individually before their parents.

What success looks like

• Your Pending tab goes back to 0 after your morning triage.
• The Approved tab contains only real reader comments and any admin replies you have made.
• The Spam tab shows a realistic amount of incoming junk (a steady trickle is normal; a sudden spike might mean a bot found you).
• On the public post, visitors see the approved thread with admin replies threaded under parent comments and an admin badge.

What to do if it does not work

• Visitors tell me they cannot leave a comment on one of my blog posts. Check the post's template — if it is SG-Builder, the comment section does not render on this version (see the first "what NOT to do" item above). Switch the post to the Text Editor template or accept the limitation.
• The comment form does not appear on ANY post. Go to Discussions → Settings and check Discussion Scope. If Blog is not ticked, your comment form will not render anywhere. Tick Blog (and any other content types you want), save, and reload the public post.
• A comment I approved is not appearing on the public post. If the post is on the SG-Builder template, approved comments will not render there — this is the same bug as the missing comment form. Check the post template. Otherwise, reload the post with a hard-refresh (Ctrl+F5) to bypass any caching.
• I cannot find the bell icon for notifications. It is not rendering on this version. Bookmark /sg-admin/notifications/ for direct access, or just watch the Pending tab count.
• I deleted a comment permanently and still see stray replies in the Approved or Spam tabs. Those are orphaned replies from the permanent-delete. Delete them individually from their own rows. Next time, delete replies first and parents last.
• I picked the wrong Bulk action and nothing seems to have happened. If the action string was not one of the valid options (Approve / Move to Pending / Mark as Spam / Move to Trash / Delete Permanently), the system silently does nothing and redirects you back to the list. Pick from the dropdown — do not type into it.

How this connects to other features

• Blog posts. Each published blog post with discussions enabled gets a comment thread on the public page. A visitor comment lands here as a Pending row.
• Pages. If you turn on Discussion Scope for pages under Settings, pages can collect comments the same way. By default only Blog is usually in scope.
• Notifications. A new pending comment creates a notification in the admin inbox at /sg-admin/notifications/. Clearing your Pending queue is what actually resolves those notifications — marking a notification "read" without acting on the comment just hides the reminder.
• Settings → Discussion Scope. Controls which content types accept comments. If nothing is ticked, no comment form renders anywhere on your site.
• Blacklist. To block a repeat abusive IP at the site level, open the Blacklist area and add the IP. The commenter's IP is shown under View on each comment row — grab it from there. Note: a determined spammer with a VPN can rotate through IPs, so this helps with persistent spammers, not fresh ones.
• Users. The admin who marked a comment read or replied to it is tracked per-user. Another admin seeing the same comment might show their own action history differently.

Next step

• Turn on Discussion Scope for the content types you want comments on under Discussions → Settings — that is usually Blog at minimum. Save.
• Bookmark /sg-admin/discussions/?status=pending so you can jump straight to the triage queue each morning.
• Check your existing blog posts' templates. Any posts built with SG-Builder will not render comments on this version — either switch them to Text Editor or plan to avoid SG-Builder for posts that need discussion.