Once you’ve set up Page discussions, you can manage them from the Engagement tab of a page. You can view the comments, see who’s watching the discussion, moderate the comments, and export them.
View subscriber details
If a website visitor wants to be notified whenever a comment is added on a page, they can click ‘Watch this discussion’ to subscribe. To view details of these subscribers, go to the Engagement tab and click View Subscribers. Their names and email addresses will appear. You can also export this list to Excel or CSV.
View comments
In the Engagement tab, you’ll see the total number of comments, along with the status of the discussion (either open for comments or closed for comments).
To view the comments, click Moderate Comments. The page and comments will appear.
Moderate comments
You may need to moderate comments to address inappropriate language or behavior, so viewers can feel safe expressing their opinions. If you chose the Pre-moderation option in the Page discussion module settings, you’ll need to approve all comments you receive before they’re published.
In addition to moderating existing comments, moderators can also add new comments. These will be displayed with a 'Moderator' badge to differentiate them from comments from the public. (Or, you can choose to leave off the badge.)
Comments can be moderated by:
- the owner and author of the page the comments appear on
- anyone assigned a role that has the ability to moderate comments (OC Developer, OC Site Manager, OC Power Publisher, and OC Moderator)
You can configure which admin staff will receive notifications on the Engagement tab of your page. See further information about configuring this here: Set up Page discussions and notifications.
There are a number of options to choose from when moderating a comment:
- Live: Allow the comment to go live and be visible to the community.
- Redact: Hide the content of a comment from the discussion but keep the record and all reply comments visible so that viewers can still interact with it.
- Archive: Hide a comment and all reply comments from view so that neither show anymore.
- Lock: Stop replies from being added to a first-level comment by locking it. It will still be visible.
- Pin: Highlight a particular thread by pinning a first-level comment so it always appears at the top of the discussion.
As a moderator, you’ll always be able to see all comments, even if they’ve been redacted, archived or locked.
The screenshot below shows how these actions can be performed on a comment. You will be given the option to pin the comment to the top or lock the thread, and you will be able to approve or reject comments using the Status dropdown menu.
Once the comment has been moderated, the results can be seen on the page. As you can see, this particular comment has been redacted and locked so the comment won't be visible and no one else can reply to it, but any replies that already exist will be visible.
Export comments
You can export comments in either an Excel or CSV format. In the Engagement tab, click Export To Excel or Export To CSV. A file will be downloaded in your chosen format with the names, email addresses, and IP addresses of commenters, along with the comment ID, the date it was posted, if it was a reply to another comment, and the text of the comment itself.