Administrator Privileges

Administrator Visibility and Control

By default, the Private Comments plugin treats WordPress Administrators as global moderators. While regular users are restricted to viewing only their own discussions, Administrators maintain full oversight of all interactions across the entire website.

Global View Rights

Administrators bypass all visibility restrictions imposed by the plugin. When logged into an account with the administrator role, you can:

• View All Comments on the Front-End: Navigate to any post or page and see every comment submitted, regardless of the comment's author or the post's author.
• Audit Private Discussions: Ensure that private conversations between users and post authors remain within community guidelines.
• Access Through the Dashboard: The plugin does not alter the standard WordPress Comments menu in the admin dashboard; all comments remain visible and manageable there as usual.

Moderation and Management

Since Administrators have global visibility, their workflow for managing comments remains unchanged. You can perform all standard moderation actions on any private comment, including:

• Approving or Unapproving comments.
• Replying to private comments (your replies will be visible to the original commenter).
• Marking comments as Spam or moving them to the Trash.

Usage Example: Verifying Comment Visibility

To verify that the plugin is working correctly while ensuring you still have administrative access, you can compare the front-end view between roles:

1. As an Administrator: Navigate to a post. You should see all comments from User A, User B, and User C.
2. As a Subscriber (User A): Log in as User A and view the same post. You will only see comments authored by yourself (User A).
3. As a Guest: View the post while logged out. No comments will be visible.

# Visibility Matrix
| Role          | Can see own comments? | Can see others' comments? |
|---------------|-----------------------|---------------------------|
| Subscriber    | Yes                   | No                        |
| Post Author   | Yes                   | Yes (on their posts only) |
| Administrator | Yes                   | Yes (on all posts)        |
| Guest         | No                    | No                        |

Note: If you have custom user roles (e.g., "Editor" or "Moderator") and want them to have the same global visibility as an Administrator, please note that this plugin specifically targets the administrator role and the post_author ID by default.