WordPress comments can be a terrific addition to your WordPress website, providing direct feedback from your audience.
However, WordPress comments can also be a double edged sword and as a result those who host them might find themselves inundated with comment spam, irrelevance and a consequential drop in their site’s speed.
But fear not! If you find that the negatives of your comments section have started to outweigh the positives, you can disable WordPress comments.
But how exactly do you disable comments? Happily, our White Peak Digital wizards have pulled this article together to explain everything you need to know to successfully disable comments in WordPress.
Why Disable WordPress Comments?
As discussed above, WordPress comments can represent an opportunity for unwarranted, spammy content to infiltrate your website.
Aside from potentially reducing your site’s speed and functionality, your comments section can also provide an arena for unsavoury content and even online bullying.
Naturally, all of the above can result in penalisation from Google and a loss of trust from your userbase.
As a result, if you disable WordPress comments, it can provide a simple way of maintaining your ranking and reputation.
By disabling comments, you can also prevent future comments from being posted, ensuring that your site remains free from unwanted content.
Spam comments
Spam will not only make your site look messy but more often than not, it introduces irrelevant, inappropriate content to your WordPress site.
These reams (of unwelcome comments) also tend to provide a multitude of links, providing access to further inappropriate content for your users.
In the eyes of Google, flooding your site with irrelevant links violates their terms and thus your ranking will dissipate.
Inappropriate content
Inextricably linked to spam, inappropriate content is a big no-no on your site.
Depending on your market, the demographic of your WordPress site visitors is likely to be wide ranging.
As a result, the inappropriateness of the content posted in your comments can range greatly too.
Such content can leave the reputation, authority, traffic and ranking of your entire WordPress site in tatters.
Harassment or bullying
With a combination of bad luck and naivety on your part, you may find your website becomes a playground for bullies.
All it takes is one disagreement or one scathing comment to spark a thread or culture of harassment dialogue.
How To Disable Comments on WordPress
With all of these unfavourable scenarios a very real possibility for unwitting WordPress website builders, disabling your comments section can immediately eliminate the opportunity for them to take hold and allow you to focus on what’s important: building your site.
Disable Comments On Past Posts
It takes 4 simple steps to disable existing comments on your past posts.
- From the WordPress dashboard sidebar, head to Posts > All posts to reveal all of the posts you have ever produced on your site.
- Next up, check the box in the top left corner of the posts table and then Bulk Actions > Edit.
- Following this, locate the Comments Section and select “Do Not Allow“.
- Last but not least, make sure you click Update! This will implement and save your changes.
To disable existing comments on all of your pages, navigate to Pages > All Pages, and repeat steps 2-4.
Disable Comments on Future Posts
WordPress disables comments by default.
However, if you’d like to make sure or have had a change of heart having initially turned comments on, you can disable future comments on your posts by:
- From the WordPress sidebar, navigate to Settings > Discussion.
- From there, simply uncheck the “Allow People To Post Comments On New Articles” option.
- Click “Save Changes“.
Et voila! You’ve successfully disabled comments on all of your future published posts.
Disable Comments In Bulk
Disabling comments in bulk is, perhaps, the most convenient way of shutting out troublesome comments and, happily, the process is essentially the same as disabling them on past posts.
- First, navigate to Posts > All Posts.
- Next up, ticking the box in the top left corner of the table, select all of your posts and then Bulk Actions > Edit.
- Now, as before, locate the Comments drop-down box and select “Do Not Allow“.
- Finally, you’ve guessed it, click Update.
To bulk disable comments on all pages, navigate to Pages > All Pages and following the same process.
Disable All Comments On A Particular Page
If you’d like to disable comments on a specific post or page, the process is slightly longer but still quick and easy.
- Simply navigate to Pages > All Pages from the admin sidebar.
- Once you’re in, you now need to locate the page you’d like to disable comment on and hover your cursor over it before selecting “Edit“.
- Now, on the top right corner of your chosen page, you should see the “3 dots” drop-down icon. Click it and select “Options“.
- This opens a pop-up box containing numerous list items including “Discussion“. Tick it and close the box.
- You should now be able to see the “Discussion” meta box in your page editor on the right side of the screen (if not, make sure you’ve selected the “Document” tab at the top).
- Within the “Discussion” meta box, untick the “Allow Comments” option and Update.
Using a Disable Comments Plugin
Using a disable comments plugin is a convenient way to manage comments on your WordPress site.
These plugins allow you to systematically disable comments on every post, page or media file and provide options to remove related fields from the backend.
To use the Disable Comments plugin, simply install and activate it on your WordPress site.
Then, go to the plugin settings and select the options for disabling comments.
The plugin also provides options for removing the “Comments are closed” message and other related fields.
Removing the ‘Comments are Closed’ Message
After disabling comments, you may notice a “Comments are closed” message on your posts or pages. To remove this message, you’ll need to edit your theme files.
The exact steps for removing the message will depend on your theme, but you can usually find the code for the message in the comments.php file.
To remove the message, open the comments.php file in a text editor and look for the code that displays the “Comments are closed” message.
This code is usually wrapped in a conditional statement that checks if comments are closed.
To remove the message, simply delete the code that displays the message, or comment it out using HTML comments.
Enhancing Site Performance
Comments can slow down your page loading times, particularly on popular posts with numerous comments.
By disabling comments you can improve overall site performance and enhance user experience, especially for content heavy sites.
Additionally, you can use caching plugins or other performance optimisation techniques to further improve site performance.
Decreasing Moderation Efforts
Disabling comments can also help decrease moderation efforts by reducing the number of comments you need to manage.
If you don’t need comments on your site, disabling them can free up resources and streamline site management.
You can use the time saved to focus on other aspects of your site, such as creating content or engaging with your audience on social media.
To decrease moderation efforts, follow the steps outlined in the previous sections to disable comments on your WordPress site.
You can also use plugins or other tools to manage comments and reduce spam comments.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately there are numerous ways to disable comments in WordPress, either en-masse, for individual posts and for those yet to come.
If you’d like to keep the comments section(s) there are other methods by which you can control them without disabling them entirely.
These methods can be beneficial as they allow you to filter out any spam, harassment or inappropriate content while retaining relevant and valuable input.
Interested in building a website with WordPress? Peruse our “What Is WordPress?” blog to get ahead of the competition.
To your success,
Jackson
