There are three ways to read comments posted to your blog:
Using the Publisher Control Panel
You can read comments by opening the main page of your blog and viewing comments listed for individual blog entries. This is how your readers read comments on your blog.
Reading Comments using the Publisher Control Panel
From the Dashboard, you can open and read comments from these locations:
| • | the Recent Comments list on the Dashboard |
| • | the article's Edit Article page |
To open comments via the Recent Comments List on the Dashboard
| 1. | Navigate to your blog's Dashboard. If there are comments posted for one or more of your blog entries, the Recent Comments list on the Dashboard is displayed below the Recent Articles list. Depending on your comment moderation settings, the Approve Selected button may also be shown. |
| 2. | To read a comment, click its name in the Comment column. The Articles Comments page opens. |
By default, the Recent Comments list displays the five most recent comments in reverse chronological order. You can change the number of comments displayed by selecting 25 or 50 from the drop-down menu and then clicking the Display button.
The Recent Comments list has the following columns:
Comment
The title of the comment appears in this column. Click the title to open the comment's Article Comments page.
Status
If the comment was posted, the word Posted is displayed in this column. If the comment is flagged and pending review, the phrase Waiting Approval appears in this column.
Author
If the person who made the comment was logged in, their name is displayed in this column. If the person commenting was not logged in, the word Anonymous appears in this column.
Date
This column contains the date and time (with time zone) when the comment was posted.
Spam Flag
A * (asterisk) in this column indicates that the blogging system has flagged a comment as potential spam. To learn more about how the system flags comments as spam, see Spam Protection Settings.
To open comments via the Edit Article page
| 1. | From the Publisher Control panel, navigate to an article, review or photo entry's Edit page. For details on opening an Edit page, see Opening articles, reviews and photos. |
If the blog entry has comments, the Comments link and the number of comments for an article is shown on its Edit page just below the title, similar to the example shown below:
| 2. | Click the Comments link. The Article Comments page opens. Depending on your comment moderation settings, the Article Comments page may also include the Approve Selected button. |
To read comments on a blog entry's Comments page
In the upper left-hand corner of the page is the Comments header (these comments are linked to an article), and below it is the title of the article.
Other components of the page are:
The Comment Tree
The Comment Tree is in the left panel of the Article Comments page, and provides a view of all the comments for the article in a tree hierarchy format.
In the example above, the Comment Tree initially shows only two although three comments in total were made to the article. This is because only two comments were made directly for the article; the other comment was made in response to another comment. The first comment has a + sign attached to its branch of the tree, which means that it has sub-comments, or comments made in response to it.
The Comments
The right portion of the page contains the comments:
Comments that are responses to other comments are indented. In the graphic example above, the indented comment "Re: Re: ..." is a response to another comment.
A comment has the following parts:
Title
The title is shown in bold at the beginning of the comment. The default title is "Re: X", where X is the title of the item to which the comment is a reply. A comment can be a reply to an article or another comment.
Byline
This is the name of the author of the comment. It is listed below the title. If the author of the comment was logged in, the byline links to the author's profile. If the author of the comment did not log in (or was logged in but chose to comment anonymously), the byline reads by Anonymous.
Date and Time
The date and time (with time zone) when the comment was posted appears immediately after the byline.
IP Address
The IP address of the computer from which the comment was posted.
Body
This is the main text of the comment. It appears below the byline. Depending on your settings, a comment may or may not contain HTML formatting. Inside the Publisher Control Panel, comments from anonymous Readers are displayed followed by the phrase “(commenter only)” to distinguish them from authenticated users.
Reading Comments in Your Email
You can also receive your comments by email, using your blog's Comment Notification feature. Your email contains the full text of the comment to your blog entry.
For details on Comment Notifications and how to receive them, see Getting Notified About Comments Via Email.
