Open one useful discussion and moderate it

1. Agree the purpose and moderator

Open the comment-policy worksheet. This fictional example accepts questions and corrections about selected advice articles. Service enquiries belong in Contact; comments are not reviews or testimonials. Name the moderator and backup owner before a real site uses comments. The worksheet states what is collected, what may appear publicly, how comments are reviewed, and how training data is cleaned. Real operator identity, retention periods and response commitments remain decisions for the operator. No response or availability is promised by this exercise.

2. Save conservative Discussion defaults

As Administrator, open Settings → Discussion. Close comments on new posts by default. Disable link notifications and pingbacks/trackbacks. Require a name and email, and require manual approval before a comment appears. Do not let a previously approved commenter bypass review. In this local exercise, notification emails, avatars, comment-cookie opt-in, threading and comment pagination are off. The link moderation threshold is two, with no broad word blocklist. These are recorded course choices; read the full settings rather than accepting defaults blindly. Click Save Changes and read the saved page back. The complete screenshots show the controls and their resulting state together.

3. Open the selected article and keep pages closed

Open Before your first garden visit in Posts. In its Post sidebar, open Discussion and choose Open. Keep Enable pingbacks & trackbacks clear. Save, leave the editor and reopen the article to check the saved choice. Inspect the other article decisions separately: changed defaults do not retroactively close every existing post. For this exercise the other Advice posts remain closed. Open Home’s Discussion panel and confirm Closed. Check Contact signed out as well: it has an enquiry form, not an article comment form.

4. Put the guidance beside the real comment form

Open Appearance → Editor and edit the Single Posts template used by this article. Open the Block Inserter, search for Comments and insert the native Comments block inside the main content area. Its comment list and form belong after the post content. Immediately before the comment form, add: Ask a question about this advice. Do not post an address, access code or service enquiry. Comments are reviewed before publication. Add a separate Contact link for service enquiries. Use List View to check the block order, then save the template. In this recorded version the first Save action saved the change. Reopen the template and confirm no unsaved change remains. Open the article signed out at desktop and phone widths. Read the complete guidance and labels before testing. Check that no avatar or unexpected comment form appears on the service pages.

5. Submit a useful synthetic question and prove it stays private

In a signed-out window, use Morgan Example and morgan@example.test. Submit: Does the side-gate advice also apply when access is through a shared path? Read the actual awaiting-moderation response. Open the ordinary article address in a different fresh browser window. Do not copy a submission URL containing a private moderation token. The other visitor must not see the pending question. Compare that page with the administrator’s moderation queue; a message shown to the submitter is not public approval.

6. Review and approve the exact question

Sign in as Cedar Editor and open Comments. Read the question in its article context, check for private details and promotional content, then choose Approve for this known synthetic question. Email values are masked in the shared queue screenshot. Reload the article in the fresh signed-out window. Confirm that the exact question and public-safe name now appear and the email does not. Keep the wording as a question; do not rewrite it into a testimonial.

7. Reject the private-data test and clean the fixture

Submit one second, clearly synthetic test containing a fake private marker and promotional example links. Confirm it stays pending. Keep the marker out of shared images with an explicit capture mask. Review the record and move it to Trash or Spam according to the documented reason. Check the cold visitor page again: the rejected content must never appear. At the end of this recorded exercise both synthetic comments are in Trash and absent from the public article. They remain only as labelled records in the disposable training site until its cleanup. Record the final settings, moderator and cleanup result. A real service site must not present these examples as customer engagement.

Practise

Open comments on one disposable Advice post, submit a useful synthetic question, prove it stays private, approve it, reject a private-data test, and finish with a documented cleanup state.

Check your result

The comment purpose and moderator are recorded. New and rejected text stays private, only the approved public-safe question is displayed, email is not public, and service pages remain closed to comments.

Optional notes