This plugin adds a Comments Report option to the Tools menu. Use the report to download a file, which you can open in a spreadsheet, showing which pages, news stories, blog posts and other content received comments, and how many.
Use this report to find your most discussed content, to measure engagement for a month or a quarter, and to compare how much discussion different kinds of content attract.
Only administrators can use the report.
Download the comments report
- Go to Tools, then Comments Report.
- Choose a Start date and an End date, or leave both blank for all comments ever made.
- Select Download comments report.
Your browser downloads a file. The file name says which period the report covers, followed by the date and time you ran it, such as comments-report-2026-07-01-to-2026-09-30-20261001093000.csv. A report for all comments is called comments-report-all-dates, followed by the date and time.
Choose the dates
- Both dates blank: every comment ever made.
- Start date and End date: comments made from the start of the Start date to the end of the End date.
- Start date only: comments made from the Start date up to today.
- End date only: every comment made up to the end of the End date.
If you enter the dates the wrong way round, the report swaps them.
The dates are about when the comments were made, not when the content was published. A news story published last year appears in this month’s report if someone commented on it this month.
What the comments report contains
The report has one row for each published item that received at least one comment in the period. Content with no comments in the period is left out. The most commented content is at the top. Items with the same number of comments are in date order, newest first.
- Title: the title of the page, news story or other item.
- Published: the date and time the item was published. This is not the date of the comments.
- Count: the number of comments the item received in the period. If you chose dates, this is not the item’s total number of comments.
- Type: the kind of content. See the list below.
- Link: the address of the item on your intranet.
The count is the number of approved comments, including replies to other comments. Comments that are waiting to be approved, marked as spam or in the bin are not counted. If you moderate comments, approve the ones you want counted before you run the report.
If a title starts with an equals sign, a plus sign, a minus sign or an at sign, the report puts an apostrophe in front of it. This stops a spreadsheet treating the title as a formula.
What the Type column means
The Type column uses the internal name of each kind of content.
- news: news stories
- news-update: news updates
- blog: blog posts
- team_news: team news
- wall-entry: entries on your recognition wall, such as the Wonderwall
- task: tasks and guides
- page: pages
- event: events
- project: projects
- vacancy: vacancies
- training: training courses
- post: standard WordPress posts, if your intranet uses them
Open the comments report in a spreadsheet
The columns in the file are separated by tabs. Numbers on a Mac and Google Sheets usually open the file in columns straight away.
If Excel shows everything in one column, select that column, choose Data, then Text to Columns, choose Delimited, tick Tab and select Finish. You can also open a blank workbook and use Data, then From Text/CSV, and choose Tab as the delimiter.
Ideas for using the comments report
- Your most discussed content is at the top of the report. Sort by Type and then Count to find the most discussed item of each kind.
- Run the report for each quarter and compare the totals to see whether staff are commenting more or less.
- Make a pivot table on Type to see how comments are shared between news, blog posts, team news and your recognition wall.
- Look at what the most discussed items have in common, such as the subject, the author or the time of year, when you plan future content.
What the comments report does not include
- The words of the comments, or who made them. To read and manage comments, use Comments in the left-hand menu.
- Content that is not published, such as drafts and items in the bin.
- Forum topics and replies. Forums keep their own posts, which are not comments.
- Likes. Use the (Govintra) Likes report for those.