WordPress

How to Completely Disable Comments in WordPress – Ultimate Guide

Kevin David October 13, 2020 No Comments

The Internet is the oyster of many individuals. With easy access to the internet, everyone has the right to voice and express their opinion.

However, not everyone has a positive intention when it comes to voice their opinion. As a result, in the internet there are comments that are not suitable for many. Especially if you are a blogger and you are putting out content regularly, you may have experienced this already.

There are spam comments, trolls and what not. These practices render many website owners to make decisions regarding disabling comments in WordPress.

With that note, we would like to present this guide on turning off comments on WordPress. This ultimate guide will elaborate on all the available options you have when it comes to WordPress disable comments.

Before getting into the details, we will note down why it is important to disable comments in WordPress. It will give you more idea on the rationale behind turning off WordPress comments.

To Avoid Hate Speech: There are many individuals who might direct, spin and twist conversation to promote hate speech online. Even though it depends on the type of content you are giving out, there is always room for comments that we might not like. Disabling comments in WordPress will help you to avoid such unwanted experiences.
To Stop Spam: In the world of the internet, spam comments are a part and parcel of daily lives. Thus it is important to keep the quality of the comment section good and stop spam comments. These spam comments also harm gullible users. Having spam comments on your blog or website does not give a good impression regarding your website. Thus it is important to disable comments to avoid spam.
Specific Requirements: Apart from the above-mentioned points, a website owner might have their own preference when it comes to allowing comments on WordPress. They can take measures to ensure WordPress comments are turned off. For them, it will also help them to address their requirements.

These are the main reasons WordPress disable comments. However, there can be many reasons for WordPress to turn off comments.

With that note, we would like to showcase the different ways you can disable comments in WordPress. In the following, we will illustrate how you can disable comments on WordPress manually and also how you can use different plugins to give you similar support.

How to Disable Comments on Future Posts in WordPress?

If you are thinking how to disable comments on future posts in WordPress, you can take the following steps to activate this feature.

Log in to your WordPress panel.
Go to Settings > Discussion.
On this page you will see an option that reads, “Allow people to post comments on new articles”.
Uncheck this option and click on “Save Changes”.

Once the settings are changed. Comments on your future posts will be disabled. And readers will not be able to comment on your future posts from now on.

How to Disable Comments on a Specific Page?

If you are looking forward to disable comments on a Specific Page you can take the following actions to disable comments on the WordPress pages.

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Select “Pages” from the menu at the left side and click on “All Pages”.
You will see the “Edit” button below every page section.
After you click on the “Edit” button you will see the option to allow comments on the right-hand side panel

From there you can uncheck the “Allow Comments” option to disable and turn off WordPress comments.
Click “Update” to make these changes effective.
After this comments will disabled on this page.

Similarly if you want to enable comments on a specific page, you just keep the “Allow Comments” box checked and your users will be able to make comments on that specific page only. If you think disabling content one by one is tiresome, you can also turn off and disable contents at bulk in WordPress. In the following, we will shed light on that.

How to Disable Comments in Bulk?

If disabling comments on posts is monotonous, you can disable comments in bulk as well. In order to disable comments in bulk, take the following actions:

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Go to “Post” then “All Posts” from the menu at the right hand side.
Select All Posts.
From the Bulk Action dropdown box, select the Edit option.
Click on Apply and you will be able to edit all the posts in bulk.

After applying the changes, you will be allowed to apply bulk action on the posts. In order to disable comments in bulk, click on the Comments drop-down and select “Do Not Allow” from the options. After clicking “Update” the changes will be made.

You can follow similar steps in order to disable comments on the page in bulk too.

How to Delete All Comments on WordPress

The above mentioned processes are for disabling comments on WordPress pages and posts. However, if you want to delete comments that are already in your WordPress website then you can do the following:

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Navigate to the Comment section from the left side menu of your dashboard.
Select all comments.
Click on “Move to Trash” from the Bulk Action drop down.
Click on Apply and the changes will be made
Repeat the actions until you have deleted all the comments

By doing this, you can easily delete all the comments that are currently present on your WordPress.

How to Disable Comments on WordPress Media?

If you have a requirement for disabling comments on the different media that have been used on your WordPress website that can be done too. However, the manual process of WordPress turn off comments is complex and time consuming. You can do the same thing in bulk with the help of a code snippet. Don’t be worried, all you have to do is copy paste the following code snippet in your theme’s functions.php file.

function filter_media_comment_status( $open, $post_id ) {
    $post = get_post( $post_id );
    if( $post->post_type == 'attachment' ) {
        return false;
    }
    return $open;
}
add_filter( 'comments_open', 'filter_media_comment_status', 10 , 2 );

This is one way to disable comments on WordPress media. However, if the above-mentioned process is complex to you, you can disable comments with the help of plugins. In the next discussion, we will shed light on how you can use WordPress plugins to disable comments on media.

How to Disable Comments on WordPress Media with Plugins?

With the help of WordPress plugins, you can easily disable comments on WordPress media. There are many plugins that will do the job for you, here we will be discussing a free plugin that will help you to disable comments on WordPress media. In order to use Disable Comments plugin, you have to do the following:

Install and activate the WordPress plugin.
Go to “Settings” then head on to “Disable Comments” plugin.
Once you click, the following box will be shown on your screen.

If you check on the first option, all the comments on your WordPress site will be deleted. The comments option on your side menu will be deleted too.
From the second option, you can pick and select from where the comments will be deleted.
Click on “Media” if you want to delete comments from all the media of your WordPress site.
Click on “Save Changes” and the update will be made.

With this plugin, you can easily disable all the comments on WordPress media. In the following we will talk about a few tools that will help you to WordPress turn off comments and have more command over who can or cannot comment on your blog, how long the comments remain visible, blocking specific commenters and more.

Plugins that Gives Control over Comments

Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee is a free plugin that will help you to deal with spam comments. You can detect spam comments, remove them, and disable specific IP and even countries with the help of this plugin. This plugin is very versatile in their nature and it can save a lot of hassle for you. With the help of this plugin, you can create a safe user experience for your readers. You can read more about Antispam Bee and its features here.

Advanced noCaptcha and Invisible Captcha

Advanced noCaptcha and Invisible Captcha gives you the feature to add captcha to your blog. Even though adding captcha on comments is not soothing from the perspective of the user. But it helps you to protect your website from spam. This adds an extra layer of protection from spammers and keeps your website safe from spamming. You can put different simple captchas to prevent spammers and keep your website safe.

Comment Link Remove and Comments Tool

Comment Link Remove and Comments Tool is a plugin that you can use to automatically remove links from the comments. This plugin will help you to remove links that are given by spammers on your comment section. This tool is very helpful if you want to keep your comments on but want to restrict links from being published in the comment section. Without getting into the coding details, you can easily block links with the help of this plugin.

With the help of these tools you can create a safer environment for your users online.

From the overall write up we can get a clear idea on how we can go about when it is about disabling or turning off WordPress comments. We touched on the specification of how you can disable individual pages, posts and conduct bulk action to disable and delete comments from WordPress. We hope the article was helpful and addressed the question and queries you had.

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