How to Install and Setup Yoast Comment Hacks for WordPress

Want an additional set of tools to help with WordPress comment management and moderation? The team behind the popular Yoast SEO plugin, released a new plugin called Yoast Comment Hacks which brings some of the much wanted comment features together. In this article, we will show you how to install and setup Yoast Comment Hacks for WordPress.

Yoast Comment Hacks Features

By default, the only way to engage with WordPress comments is by replying to them. While that’s great, it can be better. Yoast Comment Hacks allows you to do more than just replying to user comments. Here are some of it’s features:

• You can email a comment author directly from your WordPress admin area.
• You can email all users who commented on a post.
• Yoast Comment Hacks provides a cleaner comment notification email.
• You can redirect your first time commenters to any page on your site (thank you page etc).
• You can update the parent comment ID.

How to Setup Yoast Comment Hacks Plugin for WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Yoast Comment Hacks plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Comment Hacks to configure the plugin.

The settings page is divided into four different tabs. By default, you will land on the Minimum Comment Length tab.

As the name suggests, this is where you define the minimum numbers of character a comment must have. You also get to decide the error users will see if their comment is too short.

Once you have made the changes, click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

The next tab on the plugin’s settings page is labeled Email Links. Yoast Comment Hacks plugin allows you to send emails to individual comment authors as well as all users who left comment on a specific post. This page allows you to modify the comment templates.

Encouraging first time commenters will make them feel welcome on your site. Yoast Comment Hacks plugin allows you to welcome your first time commenters by redirecting them to a specific page after they leave their first comment. This can be a personalized thank you page.

First you will need to create a WordPress page where you want to send your first time commenters. This page can have links to the important posts on your site, how users can get the most out of your site, special discounts, etc.

After publishing this page, come back to plugin’s settings page and then click on Comment redirect tab.

Select the page you just created from the drop down menu and then click on the Save Changes button.

Yoast Comment Hacks plugin also cleans up the default WordPress new comment notification emails. This option is enabled by default, but you can disable it by visiting the plugin’s settings page and clicking on the Clean emails tab.

Uncheck the box next to Clean comment emails option and then click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Sending Email To Commenters in WordPress

One of the neat features of Yoast Comment Hacks is the ability to send emails to commenters. Once you have setup the plugin, you need to visit the comments page in your WordPress admin.

You will notice a new link below each comment to send email to that particular comment author.

You can also send email to all users who have left a comment on a particular post. Simply open the post in WordPress while logged in to your administrator account. You will see an email icon in your admin bar.

If you are having trouble sending or receiving email from your WordPress site, then follow our tutorial on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

Updating Comment Parent ID

There are times when users accidentally leave a top level comment when they really wanted their comment to be left as a reply.

There was no easy way to fix that until now. Yoast Comment Hacks allow you to update the parent comment ID from the comment edit screen, so you can fix any errors.

Bonus Comment Hacks

Yoast’s Comment Hacks plugin adds some very useful hacks to WordPress comments. However, there are many more tricks and hacks that can improve the commenting experience on your site. Here are some useful comment hacks that you can implement right away:

• You can start by allowing users to subscribe to comments on your site.
• If you are using comment subscriptions, then you may want to highlight new comments for returning visitors.
• Tired of dealing with too short or too lengthy comments? Limit comment length on your site by setting a maximum and minimum comment length.
• You can even notify users when their comment is approved.

We hope that this article helped you install and setup Yoast Comment Hacks plugin for your WordPress site. You may also want to take a look at our guide on how to style your WordPress comments layout.

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