The website supports any site visitor making comments on archive records or the website as a whole. Commenters do not need to have a website account to make a comment.

This commenting feature may be switched ON or OFF in the Comm Archive plugin Settings. If commenting is switched OFF, no comments form is displayed at the foot of the record page so no comments may be submitted. The Visitors Book also displays Closed. If commenting is switched ON, a link at the foot of the record page enables the comments form to be displayed and the Visitors Book is open. Site visitors may then submit a comment related to the current archive record or about the website in general on the Visitors Book page.

When a comment is submitted, an email is auto-generated and sent to the email address specified in the website Settings (the site administrator) advising of the submission.

Approval

Comments are only displayed at the foot of the record page or in the Visitors Book if commenting is switched ON in the Comm Archive plugin Settings and the comment has been APPROVED. Auto-approval of comments may be switched ON or OFF in the plugin Settings. If auto-approval is switched OFF, the comment is not displayed until it has been manually approved by a site administrator. If auto-approval is switched ON, the comment is immediately displayed without any intervention from a site administrator. It is recommended that auto-approval is switched OFF to prevent non-moderated comments being displayed.

If a comment is deemed inappropriate for whatever reason it should not be approved. If the comment is deemed inappropriate such that further comments from the commenter should be prevented, it is recommended that the comment is not deleted but marked as blacklisted.

Blacklisting

The IP Address of the site visitor making a comment is recorded along with the comment detail. This IP Address may be used to blacklist further comments from this address. Set the Blacklist switch to ON when editing the comment in the Admin Dashboard to activate the feature on this IP Address.

When new comments are submitted by a site visitor the IP Address from which they are submitting their comment is checked against all existing comments. If the IP Address of the new commenter matches that of a previous comment that is blacklisted, the new comment is rejected and the site visitor informed accordingly.

Note that blacklisting only applies to an IP Address. It is still possible for an inappropriate commenter to submit a comment from a different IP Address. In such cases, the second and subsequent IP Addresses should also be blacklisted.

Comment Form

The comment form requires the commenter to give a name and email address but there is no way of validating the data provided, other than that the email address conforms to the standard address format. There are further validation checks however:

1. a tick box must be ticked to accept GDPR and
2. the Nth character must be entered from a set to prevent bot completion of the form.

It is possible that the website will still be subjected to comments from bots (continuously running programs - robots) that trawl the internet seeking vulnerabilities that can be exploited. If this scenario arises and becomes excessive, it may become necessary to switch the commenting feature OFF.

Last edited on 06 June 2022 by Site Administrator

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