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Jun 25, 2026

Heratio Help Center article. Category: User Guide.

Article Comments - Anonymous Commenting and Moderation

Version: 1.0 Date: 2026-05-30 Area: Articles / Blog

1. Overview

Every published article (Articles / blog, at /articles/{slug}) carries a blog-style comment section. Comments are anonymous - visitors do not need to log in or register. A name is optional; when left blank the comment is shown as "Anonymous". Comments appear immediately, and administrators can moderate them after the fact.

2. How visitors comment

At the bottom of any published article there is a "Comments" section that lists existing comments and a "Leave a comment" form. A visitor:

  1. Optionally types a name.
  2. Types the comment (up to 4000 characters).
  3. Clicks "Post comment".

The comment appears straight away under the article.

3. Spam and abuse protection

Because commenting is open to anyone, several guards run automatically:

  • Honeypot field - a hidden field that real people never see. Automated bots that fill it have their submission silently discarded.
  • Per-IP flood window - the same IP address must wait a short interval between comments.
  • Rate limit - the comment endpoint is throttled per IP.
  • Length cap - comments are limited to 4000 characters.

These keep the form open and frictionless for genuine readers while blocking the most common automated abuse.

4. Moderating comments (administrators)

Administrators have a moderation screen at Admin -> Manage Articles -> Comments (/admin/articles/comments). It lists every comment, newest first, with the article it belongs to, the author (or "Anonymous"), the source IP, the comment text, its status, and when it was posted.

For each comment you can:

  • Approve - make the comment visible (the default state for new comments).
  • Spam - hide the comment from the public article.
  • Delete - remove the comment permanently.

A comment's status is one of approved (visible), pending (held, not shown), or spam (hidden). New comments default to approved so the section behaves like a normal blog; switch a comment to spam or delete it to remove unwanted content.

5. Where the comments live

Comments are stored in the blog_comment table, linked to the article in blog_post. Deleting an article removes its comments automatically.