Comments, likes and sharing
Readers can talk back
Every blog post can have comments, a ❤️ like button and a Share button. Pages (About, Contact…) never do. It's all built in: no Disqus, no third-party scripts, no tracking.
Who can comment
| Signed-in team members | Visitors | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Their account name | A display name they type |
| Goes live | Straight away | After approval (you can switch this off) |
| Links | Clickable (marked nofollow ugc) | Removed |
| HTML and code | Shown as plain text | Removed |
Replies go one level deep: a reply to a reply joins the same conversation, so threads stay easy to read on a phone. The post's author gets an Author badge, and other team members a Team badge.
Spam protection, without a CAPTCHA
- Plain text only for visitors: HTML, links, email addresses, code and invisible characters are removed, and the visitor is told. With nothing to link to, spammers gain nothing.
- A hidden field that only bots fill in.
- A signed form that refuses anything sent within 3 seconds of the page opening.
- At most 3 comments in 10 minutes from one address, and no duplicates.
- Visitors can't use a team member's name, or names like "admin".
Approving comments
New comments wait in Admin → Comments, with a count in the menu. One tap approves, marks as spam or moves to trash. You can also reply from the queue, which approves the comment and posts your answer.
- Editors and Admins moderate comments on every post.
- Authors moderate comments on their own posts.
- Contributors' own comments go live, but they don't moderate.
Moderators get an email when comments are waiting, at most once an hour each.
Email updates for visitors
After posting, a visitor sees "Want an email when it's approved or someone replies?" They can leave their address, or skip it.
- The address is never shown, not even in the admin.
- Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link.
- Addresses are deleted after 6 months.
Likes and sharing
- Like: one tap, no sign-in, one per browser. Tap again to undo. The count is added to the post's structured data for search engines.
- Share: on phones it opens the phone's own share sheet (WhatsApp, Instagram, anything installed). On computers it offers WhatsApp, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Telegram, email and Copy link.
Settings
In Settings → Comments & email (Admins):
- comments on or off for the whole blog,
- visitors' comments: wait for approval, or appear straight away,
- close comments on posts older than a number of days,
- likes and the share button on or off.
Each post also has an Allow comments switch in the editor's Post details.
Sending email (SMTP)
For email updates, JotKite needs a mailbox to send from. Without one, everything else works and visitors simply aren't offered email updates.
On Hostinger
- In hPanel, go to Emails and create a mailbox on your domain, for example
noreply@yoursite.com. - In JotKite, open Settings → Comments & email → Sending email and enter:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Send with | SMTP |
| SMTP server | smtp.hostinger.com |
| Security / port | SSL, 465 (or STARTTLS, 587) |
| Mailbox | the full address, e.g. noreply@yoursite.com |
| Password | that mailbox's password |
| From address | the same mailbox |
- Click Send a test to me. If something is wrong, JotKite says what, for example a wrong password or a blocked port.
Landing in the inbox, not spam: your domain needs an SPF record (v=spf1 include:_spf.mail.hostinger.com ~all) and the DKIM records Hostinger shows on its email DNS page. On domains that use Hostinger's nameservers, these are usually added for you. Keep just one SPF record per domain.
Other hosts: use the SMTP details of any mailbox (cPanel mail, Zoho, Google Workspace…). PHP mail() is also offered, but its emails often land in spam.
Prefer to keep the password out of the database? Put it in config.php as 'smtp_pass'. See Configuration.
For developers
Plugins can add fields to the comment form, such as a star rating, and react to new or approved comments: pb_comment_form, pb_comment_check, pb_comment_saved, pb_comment_approved and pb_comment_html. See Themes and plugins.