comments

If you want to keep your audience engaged and get some feedback about your content, you need comments. However, things can get a little out of hand from time to time, especially without moderation. Luckily that's not the thing with the Magento 2 Blog

It offers you three different comment types, the ability to edit, approve/disapprove comments and even more. You can disable blog comments for some particular blog posts and protect your blog from spam with reCaptcha.

So, today you'll learn all you need about Magento 2 Blog comments, and how to manage them properly.

Note: some of the options described here are available only in the Blog Plus and Extra.

Magento Blog supports different comment types that are part of the blog post view settings. To configure them navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog > Post View and find the Comments section.

Magefan Blog Comments

Magefan comments are the built-in comments that give you the most control over what gets published in the comments area.  

1. Set the Number of Comments and Replies to display per post by default. Customers will have to click on the See More button to see more comments.

2. Choose whether to Allow Guest Comments. If you disable this option, guests won't be able to submit a new comment or reply unless they log in.

3. Select the New Comment Status if you want to review or edit them prior to publishing.

4. Decide whether to Display Privacy Policy Agreement.

5. Define the date displaying format in the Comments Date Format field.

magefan blog comments magento

6. Enable Email Notifications option if you want customers to receive emails about other comments to the post or replies to their comments. Choose the Sender and Email Template for this notification.

Note: once you enable this option, all customers who leave comments will be available under Content > Blog > Comment Subscribers

7. Enable the Admin Email Notifications option if you want admin users to receive emails about new blog comments and fill out the same two options Sender and Email Template, plus the recipient (Sent To).

magento 2 blog comment settings

Edit, approve, disapprove comments

If you choose the Magefan comments and set a Pending status for new comments, you'll receive an admin notification about it. Then to view and moderate the comments go to Content > Blog > Comments.

magento blog new comment

On the comments page you can see:

  • Nickname of the person who left a comment and the Author Type
  • Comment content
  • Post and Store View this comment was left on
  • Published and Modified Dates
  • Status 

Once you click on a specific comment, you go to the editing page with the same information. But here you can also edit, approve, disapprove or reply to a comment.

magento 2 blog comment

Don't forget to Save a comment after you finish and view it on the frontend. 

Magento 2 Blog Comments

Disable comments for specific blog post

While you can enable and disable comments when editing them, you can also prevent visitors from leaving comments altogether. For specific posts only. To achieve this:

  1. Navigate to Content > Posts and choose a post you want to disable comments for.
  2. Find the Enable Comments option in the Display Settings section and disable it.

Magento 2 blog poct comments

Blog comments ReCaptcha

To protect your blog from robots-generated comments, and improve security in general you need to enable blog comments reCaptcha.

1. Install the Magento 2 Blog Comments reCaptcha extension.

Pay attention to the requirements for the Blog Comments ReCaptcha extension:

  • If you have Magento Community or Magento Enterprise 2.1.2-2.3.x, use Blog Comments Recaptcha Extension version 2.0.5.
  • If you have Magento Community or Magento Enterprise 2.4.x, use Blog Comments Recaptcha Extension version 2.1.1 or higher.
  • Magefan Blog Extension version has to be 2.9.4.3 or higher.

2. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Security > Google reCaptcha and find Frontend section.

3. Enable blog comments reCaptcha in the Use in Magefan Blog Comments field.

Magento 2 Blog Comments Recaptcha

Don't forget to Save the settings once you finish and be sure no robots will spam your blog comments.

Missing Magefan comments

When you use third-party themes, some elements from different extensions might not work as expected. In our case it's comments. 

So, if you've enabled Magefan comments but don't see them under the blog post, compare the blog_post_view.xml layout file in your theme folder

app/design/frontend/ThemeVendor/themename/Magefan_Blog/layout/blog_post_view.xml

and the original blog_post_view.xml layout file from the blog extension code.

app/code/Magefan/Blog/view/frontend/layout/blog_post_view.xml
or
vendor/magefan/module-blog/view/frontend/layout/blog_post_view.xml

You may have missed XML nodes in the theme layout. Just correct the theme layout file, save the changes and flush Magento cache to see the comments.

Facebook Blog Comments

Unlike Magefan comments, Facebook ones don't give you that much control. But there are still some benefits to explore. 

  1. Set the Number of Comments to be displayed by default.
  2. Enter the Facebook Application ID and whether to Insert Facebook Application ID in the HEAD Tag to track traffic to your website from Facebook.
  3. Set a Sender, recipient email (Send To) and Email Template for the email notifications the admin will receive about the Facebook comments.

magento blog facebook comments

Although you can't see Facebook comments in the admin panel you can moderate them with the Facebook Moderation Tool.

This is what the Facebook Blog Comments look like on the storefront:

Magento 2 facebook blog comments

Disqus Blog Comments

Once you choose Disqus comments, all you need to specify is Your Disqus Forum Shortname and the admin email notification details — Sender, recipient email (Send To) and Email Template.

magento 2 blog discuss comments

Same as with Facebook you can't edit Disqus comments in the admin panel. But you can moderate them from your Disqus account.

This is what the Disqus Blog Comments look like on the storefront:

Magento 2 disqus blog comments

With such a variety of comment options, you can easily find the one that works best for you. Remember that comments are a great way to communicate with your readers. But not the only way. 

Plenty of content is shared online these days — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest — you name it. So make sure there's an option for visitors to share your posts on social media to generate even more traffic to your blog.