The easiest way to turn off and disable comments in WordPress [and why do it]

Whether it’s for safety reasons or you just don’t want to have comments as a feature, knowing how to disable comments in WordPress is useful. And, before we walk you through each step, here are a few reasons why it’s considered good practice to turn off comments in WordPress.

Having comments on your site or blog comes with pros and cons. On one side, there is that engaging angle, meaning that comments drive engagement, lower bounce rate, and make your web place seem interesting both to people and search engines. However, there’s always that other side as well. Hateful, spammy, offensive, out-of-the-line in any shape and form comments. While comments are a great way for a further conversation, there is always the possibility of dealing with the other side of the medal, inappropriate ones that will drive visitors away. Or, to end up having an empty commenting section – does the same thing and makes you not worthwhile or interesting or credible. Either way, the struggle is real.

Spam

One of the most common issues anyone faces are spam comments. Maybe it’s a software that’s doing this; perhaps it’s a person who’s just meddling with you. Either way, spam comments are a threat and something everybody deals with at some point in its blog/website life. So, to know how to turn off or disable comments in WordPress would be a good thing for that matter.

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Speed

In some cases, comments are one of the reasons that your site doesn’t load fast enough. There are a good amount of tools that help you check your site speed, like

• Gtmetrix
• PageSpeed
• Pingdom

So, if nothing else threatens your page speed but comments, maybe it’s time to temporarily turn them off or globally disable them. Because, you know, site speed influences everything else and should be taken seriously. But, that’s a topic for another article, stay tuned 🙂

Time

Maintaining a good, clean, and safe commenting environment is sometimes both time and energy-consuming. Going through each and every one, reading, looking for red flags, approving, keeping the conversation alive… you see where we’re going? Not to mention avoiding confrotation and getting into an argument with the visitors. So many possible verbal “land mines” to look out for, right?

Unnecessary to have comments

In some cases, people don’t need comments on their blogs or websites. True story. With the rise of social media, it became common to shift the conversation there. Whether you just want to disable comments from certain posts or pages or completely, it’s good to know-how.

So, whether you want to feel and be more of authority, maintain a good image and keep your web space safe from any unwanted communication, and you have your site or blog on WordPress, these are the four easiest ways to disable comments. From disabling comments to all future posts to locking down specific posts or pages, all the way through disabling it with plugins, whatever fits your needs the best.

How to turn off or disable comments in WordPress?

There are several ways to disable comments in WordPress and you can learn how to do it by yourself. All you need is to follow these steps and let us know how it worked out 🙂

Turn off comments in WordPress for future posts and pages

As you see from the video, all you need to do is uncheck the „Allow people to post comments on new articles.“ The same goes for pingbacks and trackbacks as well. That action will stop pings and comments on all future posts on your blog or site.

Still, these settings may be overridden for individual articles. That means, if you want to have comments on individual posts, you can change the settings under Other comment settings within the Discussions option.

Disable comments in WordPress on all published posts and/or pages

Option one, as good as it is for future posts, won’t turn off comments on posts or pages that are already published. To disable comments in WordPress posts and pages that are published, simply do this:

Dashboard > Comments > Bulk Action > Move to Trash > Apply

These steps will move all the existing comments to trash, and once you permanently delete them, it’s all done.

Turn off comments of individual WordPress posts

This tip is easy, too. Simply, when you write an article, within the Discussion feature below the Editor, uncheck „Allow comments,“ and you’re done! As simple as that. Good to know in all those cases when you post sensitive content and don’t want to be disrupted with unwanted comments.

Also, there’s another way to do this:

Go to All Pages and choose the Page you want to disable comments from. Choose Quick Edit, uncheck Allow comments and it’s done. You successfully turned off commenting on your WordPress page.

How to disable WordPress comments with plugins

Disable comments

A free plugin that helps you to turn off comments in WordPress both temporarily or permanently. Use this plugin if you want to completely disable comments on your site or when you want to turn them off from individual types of categories. It’s very easy and intuitive to set everything up, in cases you don’t want comments at all on your site or on certain post types. If you want to manage and turn off your WordPress comments selectively, it’s better to do it through native WordPress options and features described above.

Disable Comments by rb Plugins

Whether you want to fully disable comments on your posts, pages, and attachments, or just in some parts of your site, this is another great free plugin to use. From disabling comment widgets, discussion page settings turned off, to disabling pingbacks, hiding comments, and more – you can do it all without the need to have some particular skills or knowledge of programming. Every feature is easily accessible and customizable from within the plugin’s dashboard with plenty of how-to explanation for each step.

Other ways to manage and turn off WordPress comments

Now, these are alternative ways of maintaining your website’s conversation which includes you do more extensive work. One would be for you to have a dedicated moderator to approve comments before they go published. Yes, pretty much like back in the old days with forums, only they wouldn’t have to be always present. The comments would sit back in the pending, waiting to be approved.

Another way would be to close comments on older posts, which don’t include much work. All you have to do is this:

Settings > Disscusion >Other Comment Section > Automatically close comments on posts older than  days

BONUS

But, what if you still want to have some form of an engaging tool on your site? You can always offer social commenting as the second-best thing. Just because you’ve disabled WordPress commenting, social comments offer a way to have and keep decent conversation. How? Well, mear fact that you usually sing up to Facebook with your real name will ensure that the communication should be polite and in the right manner.

There you have it. Let us know how it worked out in the comment section and do share in what cases you opt to use this tip.

Tags: WordPress plugins, WordPress tips