Comment Link Moderation Whitelist

Allows for whitelisted URLs to not count against the comment moderation max number of links limit.

On the ‘Settings’ -> ‘Discussion’ admin page, WordPress allows admins to define the maximum number of links permitted in a comment before that number of links automatically triggers moderation for a comment. That setting is labeled “Hold a comment in the queue if it contains N or more links” under “Comment Moderation”, where “N” is the input for the specified number. If set, WordPress will blindly count any link that appears in the comment and hold that comment for moderation if enough links are found.

In certain cases, however, you’d like to your visitors to be able to link to certain trusted URLs (such as your own site) without it counting towards the moderation link count limit. Unnecessary moderation of comments that simply contain links to resources you trust puts additional burden on comment moderators and hampers discussions.

Simply install this plugin and specify a list of trusted domains, and then links to those URLs will no longer count against your commenters.

Note: It is unnecessary to specify the protocol when listing URLs. Also, subdomains are inferred and need not be explicitly listed.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or unzip comment-link-moderation-whitelist.zip inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
3. Via the ‘Settings’ -> ‘Discussion’ admin page, define some URLs in the ‘Comment Link Moderation Whitelist’ field.

Do I need to explicitly list all the subdomains of a domain?

No, not if you list the primary domain name. If you list example.com, then there is no need to explicit list its subdomains, such as info.example.com. However, if you do not list the primary domain (in cases where you consider it too broad), then yes, you must list each subdomain you want to whitelist.

Do I need to specify the protocol when listing a URL?

No. You can omit the “http://” and “https://” from the URLs you list, though it won’t matter if you include it.

Can I specify a path to only whitelist a certain section of a URL?

Yes, you can input something like “example.com/docs/” to allow only links relative to the location. In such a case, “example.com” and “example.com/downloads” would not be whitelisted and would count against the comment moderation max number of links limit.

Does this completely negate any checking for the number of links in a comment if a commenter uses an excessive number of whitelisted URLs?

No. There is a hardcoded maximum number of comment links limit of 25 (which will become a configurable setting in a future release). If the number of comment links exceeds this number, regardless of whatever URLs are whitelisted, then the comment will be flagged for moderation. In the event WordPress is given a comment max links limit greater than 25, then the fallback maximum for whitelisted + non-whitelisted URL will be 10 higher than that limit. This limit exists to prevent abuse by a commenter including an excessive number of whitelisted URLs.

Does this plugin include unit tests?

Yes.

Is this plugin localizable?

Yes.