How to Limit Comment Length in WordPress?

Do you want to limit comment length in WordPress?

A comment is an ideal way of enabling discussion around your blog posts and building a community. Your website audience can share their opinion, give feedback, and ask questions.

However, there are multiple scenarios when you don’t find comments useful and helpful. Specially one-word comments.

We are moderating comments for a decade on our websites. We found out that most people are leaving comments on websites for backlinks or spamming.

Therefore, we have set a range for the comment length for our websites. An ideal comment should be above 60 characters and below 4000 characters.

WordPress doesn’t offer a way to control the comment length. Therefore we have created code snippets that you can use to limit WordPress comment length.

Set a Range for Comment Length in WordPress

The code snippet below allows you to set minimum and maximum character limits for comments in WordPress.

/**
 * Set a Range for Comment Length in WordPress
 *
 * @param string[] $comment
 * @return string[] $comment
 */
function maverick_set_comment_length_range($comment)
{
    $minimum_characters = 60;
    $maximum_characters = 4000;

    if (strlen($comment['comment_content']) > $maximum_characters) {
        wp_die('Comment is too long. The comment must be less than ' . $maximum_characters . ' characters');
    }
    if (strlen($comment['comment_content']) < $minimum_characters) {
        wp_die('Comment is too short. Please use at least ' . $minimum_characters . ' characters.');
    }
    return $comment;
}
add_filter('preprocess_comment', 'maverick_set_comment_length_range');

Set Minimum Comment Length in WordPress

Use the code snippet below if you only want to set the minimum character limit for WordPress comments.

/**
 * Set Minimum Comment Length in WordPress
 *
 * @param string[] $comment
 * @return string[] $comment
 */
function maverick_set_minumum_comment_length($comment)
{
    $minimum_characters = 60;

    if (strlen($comment['comment_content']) < $minimum_characters) {
        wp_die('Comment is too short. Please use at least ' . $minimum_characters . ' characters.');
    }

    return $comment;
}
add_filter('preprocess_comment', 'maverick_set_minumum_comment_length');

Set Maximum Comment Length in WordPress

Use the code snippet below if you only want to set the maximum character limit for WordPress comments.

/**
 * Set Maximum Comment Length in WordPress
 *
 * @param string[] $comment
 * @return string[] $comment
 */
function maverick_set_maximum_comment_length($comment)
{
    $maximum_characters = 4000;

    if (strlen($comment['comment_content']) > $maximum_characters) {
        wp_die('Comment is too long. The comment must be less than ' . $maximum_characters . ' characters');
    }

    return $comment;
}
add_filter('preprocess_comment', 'maverick_set_maximum_comment_length');