How to Disable Comments on WordPress Posts
One common problem facing WordPress users is the amount of spam comments.
There are some spam-fighting tools such as Akismet and Mollom, but some WordPress users prefer to turn off comments entirely.
One of our students wanted to disable WordPress comments, so we created this step-by-step tutorial for him.
- Go to Settings > Discussion.
- Uncheck the “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new posts”.
- Uncheck the “Allow people to post comments on new articles”.
The pingbacks feature of WordPress is like commenting for computers. It allows other blogs to leave a comment or link on your blog to their blog if they mention you. Unfortunately, in many cases it’s not useful and is a bit like link-spam.
Finally, at the bottom, save your changes and you’re done.
If you do still get commenting at the bottom of some older posts, you’ll need to go to those individual posts and uncheck the settings for commenting. The quickest way to do this is with the “Bulk Edit” feature.
How to Automatically Disable All Comments
If you want to go a step further and completely remove all traces of comments or comment features from your site, we recommend the Disable Comments plugin. This plugin allows administrators to globally disable comments on any post type (posts, pages, attachments, etc.) so that these settings cannot be overridden for individual posts. It also removes all comment-related fields from edit and quick-edit screens.
If you don’t want to disable comments entirely, this video from the WordPress Beginner Class can help. Or check out our YouTube WordPress Series Videos.
Moderating and Approving Comments
If you want to keep comments enabled, but control how to manage and approve the comments, you can do this with the moderate_comments capability. This controls who can manage and post comments on your site.
It’s also possible to control who can manage comments on a more granular basis. This guide explains how authors can manage comments on their own posts.
Other Ways to Improve WordPress Comment
If your comments generate good discussion, you can allow users to subscribe to the comments on a post. If your userbase is active on Facebook, you could also consider using Facebook comments.
I agree that the Disable Comments plugin works great for totally disabling commenting site-wide. Alternatively, if you want to disable comments on an existing site, in Settings > Discussion, set Automatically close comments on articles older than __ days to 0. You can also [url=http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/14/using-quick-edit-and-bulk-edit-to-manage-your-posts-in-half-the-time/]bulk edit posts/pages[/url] to quickly disable comments on multiple posts/pages.
Nice tricks, Chad! Thanks for posting them.
That’s really a cool hack Chad. Thanks!
I am using free version of akismet for a long time for my wordpress sites, it works great actually. Didn’t need to disable all the comments.
Very difficult topic you picked and it is still to say definitely about two of its options. You well covered all the merits and demerits and did full justice with the topic.
I think it also depends upon the niche of one’s blog. If niche relates to an industry where nothing is worthy of selling then obviously he has to rely on PPC options to earn money. For that he needs not to build a community.
Yes for those blogging on popular niche they must continue commenting option and should not think to disable it. They can’t make money without building a community and commenting plays a big role for this task.
Thanks a lot for sharing this very debate igniting post.
Blog commenting has its purpose, to allow the reader to express their thoughts and provide an interaction with the writer and other readers. Of course its detrimental when someone comes and do Spam links but easily blocked.
Thank you so much. I use twenty sixteen theme and have been looking for sometime to turn comments on for pages. I was half right but didn’t tick allow comments at bottom! Thank you i had just about given UP.
The “Disable Comments plugin DOES NOT WORK GREAT seeing as it has ad-scripts running in the background”
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Thanks for tutorials
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