How to Set Comment as Pending if Author Link Greater than 50 Characters

Are you looking for a way to set any comment to a pending status whenever the comment author URL is greater than 50 characters long? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to set comment as pending if author link greater than 50 characters.

This is of course not the best way to avoid spam as lots of tools exist that are more accurate. However, this is a simple method that can help, and if nothing else this is some interesting code you can learn from.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

function comment_url_lengthcheck( $approved , $commentdata ) {
	return ( strlen( $commentdata['comment_author_url'] ) > 50 ) ? '0' : $approved;
}
add_filter( 'pre_comment_approved', 'comment_url_lengthcheck', 99, 2 );

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly add code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: 50+ best responsive WordPress themes and how to create a custom user registration form in WordPress.