Never Moderate Registered Users

This plugin prevents comments from registered users (or, alternatively, those with specified capabilities) from ever going into the moderation queue or getting automatically marked as spam, regardless of the apparent spamminess of the comment.

To be recognized as a registered user, the user must be logged into your site at the time they post their comment.

This plugin assumes that you trust your registered users. It will automatically approve any comment made by registered users, even if the comment stinks of spam. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not allow users to register themselves (uncheck the setting “Anyone can register” in the WordPress admin under Settings -> General).

You can still allow open registration, whereby these “subscribers” are moderated as usual, while other more privileged users do not get moderated. The plugin provides a filter, ‘c2c_never_moderate_registered_users_caps’, which allows you to specify the roles and capabilities that can bypass moderation. See the FAQ for an example.

This plugin is a partial successor to my now-defunct Never Moderate Admins or Post Author plugin. In addition to preventing admins and the post’s author from being moderated, that plugin also allowed you to prevent registered users from being moderated. WordPress has long since integrated that functionality, so the main thrust of that plugin became moot. However, the ability to never moderate registered users is still a valid need that requires this plugin.

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

Developer Documentation

Developer documentation can be found in DEVELOPER-DOCS.md. That documentation covers the numerous hooks provided by the plugin. Those hooks are listed below to provide an overview of what’s available.

• c2c_never_moderate_registered_users_caps : Customize the capabilities that are automatically trusted, any one of which a user must have in order to never get moderated.
• c2c_never_moderate_registered_users_approved : Customize granular control for whether a comment by a registered user that would otherwise be moderated or marked as spam should automatically be approved.

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or install the plugin code inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
3. Optional: Use one or more of the provided hooks in custom code to control specific capabilities that should be exempted from moderation and spam or to control the feature on a comment-by-comment basis.

2.3.6 (2025-04-14)

• Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.8+
• Change: Note compatibility through PHP 8.3+
• Change: Update copyright date (2025)
• Unit tests:
  • Change: Explicitly define return type for overridden methods

2.3.5 (2024-08-21)

• Change: Shorten plugin description
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.6+
• Change: Update copyright date (2024)
• Change: Reduce number of ‘Tags’ from readme.txt
• Change: Remove development and testing-related files from release packaging
• Unit tests:
  • Hardening: Prevent direct web access to bootstrap.php
  • Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin directory in a constant

2.3.4 (2023-06-06)

• Change: Note compatibility through WP 6.3+
• Change: Update copyright date (2023)
• New: Add .gitignore file
• Unit tests:
  • Fix: Allow tests to run against current versions of WordPress
  • New: Add composer.json for PHPUnit Polyfill dependency
  • Change: Prevent PHP warnings due to missing core-related generated files

2.3.3 (2021-10-05)

• New: Add DEVELOPER-DOCS.md and move hooks documentation into it
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.8+
• Change: Tweak installation instruction
• Unit tests:
  • Change: Restructure unit test directories
    • Change: Move phpunit/ into tests/
    • Change: Move phpunit/bin into tests/
  • Change: Remove ‘test-‘ prefix from unit test file
  • Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin file constant
  • Change: In bootstrap, add backcompat for PHPUnit pre-v6.0

Full changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.