Enabling comments can be a great way to engage with your audience, but many users want to disable comments in WordPress for valid reasons. Having a comment section can pose security risks, and some sites simply don’t need one at all.
If you’re looking to disable comments on your WordPress site, you have come to the right place. In this article, we will explain multiple step-by-step methods on how to disable comments on WordPress.
Press Comments
Before we explain how to disable comments on WordPress, let’s see the reasons why you would want to do that in the first place.
Here are some reasons why you might want to disable comments in WordPress:
1. Spam
In general, spam refers to any unwanted user-generated content. People often spam with malicious intent, which makes it potentially harmful to people on the receiving end. Spam can also negatively impact a site’s reputation on search engines.
In the context of WordPress, spam comments are something that most site owners have to deal with. Personal blogs, large eCommerce websites, and everything in between can be affected by spam. To combat it, most website owners have various strategies in place, which include disabling comments.
2. Comments Can Be a Security Risk
Spam comments are notorious for their security risks. Many include dangerous links that can install viruses, collect personal information, and steal money from whoever clicks them.
Even if your site visitors know well enough not to engage with spam links, their presence on your site can negatively impact your trustworthiness.
Put it this way – if you don’t do enough to protect your website from security risks in your comment box, how are your visitors going to trust your brand as a whole? Putting in the effort to deplatform potential attackers by disabling comments is a step in the right direction.
3. You Are Running a Shop and Don’t Need Comments
When it comes to running an online store, having comment sections distributed throughout the website is unnecessary. Some shops prefer to disable all comments altogether, especially if the site’s primary purpose is to list the items they sell.
Having a comment section on your product pages can distract visitors that are otherwise interested in a purchase. It can also make your business appear unprofessional because unmonitored comment sections tend to attract spam links.
4. You Have a Dedicated Forum Where Your Viewers Can Have Discussions
Disabling comments on WordPress doesn’t mean you’ll cut off all engagement between you and your visitors.
You might’ve already created a separate space for your visitors to communicate with you and each other. Maybe you prefer to use a membership site or your social media channels for this activity.
In this case, you don’t need comments on your WordPress site. By disabling them, your site can focus on other purposes, such as providing information and making sales.
How to Disable Comments On WordPress?
There are various methods to turn off WordPress comments. In this article, we will cover seven different options.
Method 1: Disable Comments in WordPress on All Published Posts and Pages
If you want to disable all comments on a website, this method is for you.
Once you apply the following changes, you’ll remove comments on all existing pages and blog posts.
First, you’ll want to delete all of the existing comments under every post and page.
- Navigate to the WordPress admin area.
- Go to Comments. You’ll see a table detailing every comment you’ve received on your site.
- Select all the comments by checking the box located on the top left corner of the table.
- Select Move to Trash from the Bulk Actions drop-down box.
- Click Apply.
At this point, you will delete all existing comments on your website. But the WordPress comment form will still be present. It will allow people to post comments underneath your posts and pages.
To fix this for future posts, let’s disable the comment form under every post and page. There are two ways to go about this.
The first option is to use Bulk Actions.
1. Navigate to Posts > All Posts. You’ll see a table containing all the posts you have published.
