MoodModerator – AI Comment Moderation & Tone Analysis

AI-powered comment sentiment analysis and automatic moderation for WordPress. Keep your community positive and healthy using OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini.

Features

🤖 AI-Powered Analysis

• Advanced Sentiment Detection - Uses OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini for accurate tone classification
• Hybrid Tone Approach - Combines predefined tones (Friendly, Toxic, Sarcastic, Questioning, Angry, Neutral) with AI-suggested new tones
• Confidence Scoring - Each analysis includes a confidence percentage

🛡️ Automatic Moderation

• Configurable Strictness Levels:
  • Low - Only hold Toxic and Angry comments
  • Medium - Hold Toxic, Angry, and Sarcastic comments (Recommended)
  • High - Hold all except Friendly, Questioning, and Neutral
  • Custom - Choose specific tones to auto-hold
• Smart Comment Holding - Automatically sends negative comments to moderation queue

📊 Comprehensive Analytics

• Comments Table Integration - Tone badges directly in WordPress Comments admin
• Posts Table Integration - Average sentiment column for each post
• Dashboard Widget - 30-day sentiment summary on your WordPress dashboard
• Post Edit Screen - Sentiment breakdown meta box showing tone distribution

🔧 Advanced Features

• Smart Caching - Minimizes API costs by caching results (configurable duration)
• Rate Limiting - Built-in 100 API calls/hour limit to control costs
• Comprehensive Logging - Track all API calls, errors, and moderation decisions
• Tone Filtering - Filter comments by tone in the admin interface
• AI Tone Suggestions - Review and approve new tones suggested by AI
• Detailed Metadata Viewer - View complete analysis data for each comment

🌍 Developer Friendly

• Full Internationalization - Translation-ready with .pot file included
• WordPress Coding Standards - Follows all WP coding standards and best practices
• Secure by Design - Nonces, sanitization, escaping, encrypted API keys
• No jQuery - Pure vanilla JavaScript for better performance
• Extensible Architecture - Well-structured OOP code for easy customization

Requirements

• WordPress: 6.0 or higher
• PHP: 7.4 or higher
• OpenAI API Key: Get one here

Installation

From WordPress.org (Recommended)

1. Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin
2. Search for "MoodModerator"
3. Click Install Now and then Activate

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release from Releases
2. Upload the moodmoderator folder to /wp-content/plugins/
3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress

From Source

git clone https://github.com/rehanadil/moodmoderator-wordpress-plugin.git
cd moodmoderator-wordpress-plugin
# Copy to WordPress plugins directory
cp -r . /path/to/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/moodmoderator/

Configuration

1. Get OpenAI API Key

   • Sign up at platform.openai.com
   • Navigate to API Keys section
   • Create a new API key

2. Configure Plugin

   • Go to Settings > MoodModerator in WordPress admin
   • Enter your OpenAI API key
   • Choose your preferred strictness level
   • Optionally adjust cache duration

3. Test the Setup

   • Submit a test comment on any post
   • Check Comments admin to see the tone badge
   • Review Tools > MoodModerator Logs for API activity

Usage

Viewing Sentiment Data

Comments Table:

• Navigate to Comments in WordPress admin
• See tone badges next to each comment
• Filter comments by tone using the dropdown

Posts Table:

• Navigate to Posts in WordPress admin
• View average sentiment in the MoodModerator column

Dashboard Widget:

• View 30-day sentiment summary on your dashboard
• Shows comment count per tone

Post Edit Screen:

• Edit any post
• See sentiment analytics in the MoodModerator meta box
• View complete tone distribution for that post's comments

Managing Tones

1. Go to Settings > MoodModerator
2. Scroll to Tone Management section
3. Review AI-suggested tones
4. Approve or reject new tones
5. Use approved tones in Custom strictness settings

Viewing Logs

1. Go to Tools > MoodModerator Logs
2. Filter by:
   • Log type (API call, error, comment held, etc.)
   • Date range
   • Search terms
3. Click View Details to see complete metadata

Clearing Cache

To force re-analysis of all comments:

1. Go to Settings > MoodModerator
2. Click Clear Cache button
3. Comments will be re-analyzed on next view

Cost Estimation

MoodModerator uses OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini model for analysis:

• Cost per comment: ~$0.00015 USD
• 1,000 comments: ~$0.15 USD
• 10,000 comments: ~$1.50 USD

The built-in caching significantly reduces costs by avoiding re-analysis of unchanged comments.

How It Works

graph TD
    A[Comment Submitted] --> B{Has API Key?}
    B -->|No| C[Allow Comment]
    B -->|Yes| D{Cache Valid?}
    D -->|Yes| E[Use Cached Sentiment]
    D -->|No| F[Send to OpenAI API]
    F --> G[Receive Tone & Confidence]
    G --> H[Save Sentiment Data]
    H --> E
    E --> I{Should Hold?}
    I -->|Yes| J[Set to Pending]
    I -->|No| K[Allow Comment]
    J --> L[Log Decision]
    K --> L

Loading

Technical Details

Architecture

moodmoderator/
├── admin/                          # Admin-specific functionality
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-admin.php
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-comments-table.php
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-logs.php
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-posts-table.php
│   ├── css/
│   └── partials/
├── assets/                         # Public assets
│   └── js/
│       └── moodmoderator-admin.js  # Vanilla JavaScript (no jQuery)
├── includes/                       # Core functionality
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-ai.php          # OpenAI integration
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-cache.php       # Caching logic
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-comment-handler.php
│   ├── class-moodmoderator-database.php    # Database operations
│   └── class-moodmoderator.php             # Main plugin class
├── languages/                      # Translation files
│   └── moodmoderator.pot
└── moodmoderator.php              # Plugin entry point

Database Schema

Custom Tables:

• wp_moodmoderator_logs - Activity logging
• wp_moodmoderator_tone_suggestions - AI-suggested tones

Comment Meta:

• moodmoderator_tone - Detected tone
• moodmoderator_confidence - Confidence score (0-1)
• moodmoderator_analyzed_at - Analysis timestamp
• moodmoderator_content_hash - Content hash for cache validation
• moodmoderator_ai_reasoning - AI's reasoning (optional)

Security Features

• ✅ API key XOR encryption with WordPress salts
• ✅ Nonce verification on all forms
• ✅ Input sanitization with sanitize_text_field() and wp_unslash()
• ✅ Output escaping with esc_html(), esc_attr(), esc_url()
• ✅ Prepared SQL statements via $wpdb->prepare()
• ✅ Capability checks for admin actions
• ✅ Rate limiting to prevent API abuse

Privacy & Data Handling

MoodModerator sends comment text to OpenAI's API for sentiment analysis:

• Data Sent: Comment text and optionally post title for context
• Data Storage: Sentiment results stored in WordPress database
• Third-Party Processing: OpenAI processes comment text per their privacy policy
• Retention: OpenAI does not store data beyond their standard retention policies

Site owners should disclose this third-party processing in their privacy policy.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow these guidelines:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Follow WordPress coding standards
4. Add appropriate phpcs comments for exceptions
5. Test thoroughly on clean WordPress install
6. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
7. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
8. Open a Pull Request

Development Setup

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/rehanadil/moodmoderator-wordpress-plugin.git
cd moodmoderator-wordpress-plugin

# Install WordPress coding standards
composer require --dev wp-coding-standards/wpcs

# Run code sniffer
phpcs --standard=WordPress .

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will this work with existing comments? A: The plugin analyzes new comments as they're submitted. Existing comments are not automatically analyzed.

Q: What if the OpenAI API is down? A: Comments will be allowed through using WordPress's default moderation rules. The plugin logs errors for debugging.

Q: Does it work with other moderation plugins like Akismet? A: Yes! MoodModerator runs after Akismet (priority 11), so spam is already filtered.

Q: Can I customize the tone categories? A: Yes! The plugin uses a hybrid approach. AI can suggest new tones which you can approve via Settings.

Q: Will this slow down my site? A: No. API calls happen during comment submission with a 5-second timeout to ensure responsiveness.

Roadmap

• Support for additional AI providers (Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini)
• Bulk re-analysis of existing comments
• Webhook notifications for negative comments
• Export logs to CSV
• WP-CLI commands for batch operations
• Integration with email notification plugins

License

This plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 or later.

MoodModerator – AI Comment Moderation & Tone Analysis
Copyright (C) 2025 Rehan Adil

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

See LICENSE for full license text.

Author

Rehan Adil

• Website: rehanadil.dev
• GitHub: @rehanadil

Support

For support, feature requests, or bug reports:

• GitHub Issues: Report an issue
• WordPress.org: Plugin Support Forum
• Website: rehanadil.dev

Acknowledgments

• Built with OpenAI GPT-4o-mini
• Follows WordPress Coding Standards

---

Made with ❤️ for the WordPress community