Stop Spammers in Their Tracks: How to Disable Comments in WordPress

One of the easiest ways for spammers to take over your blog and clog it up with junk advertisements, spam and worse is to flood your comments section. Although comments can be a great way to grow your interaction with visitors, it can also be a haven for spammers and scammers. Thankfully, WordPress lets you easily disable comments.

Plus, you can not only disable comments on posts, but also pages and your entire website. If you only want to disable comments from certain posts or pages, you have that option as well. Although not every comment is going to be from a spammer, you’ll need to decide who you let comment and how to avoid making your WordPress blog a haven for junk links and scams. Fortunately, WordPress plugins let you control the degree of commenting that you’ll allow while making sure your site doesn’t get overrun with garbage.

Here’s how to do each one, step by step. 

Disable All Comments in WordPress

If you’ve just started your WordPress website, you can disable all comments site-wide easily by going to Settings > Discussion in the WordPress administration area. Then, under Discussion Settings, simply uncheck the box that says “Allow people to post comments on new articles”.  This makes sure that all of your posts cannot be commented on. But there may be times when you want people to comment on certain posts or pages. Keep reading below to learn how to do that.

Delete All WordPress Comments

If you’ve had your WordPress site for awhile, and you want to do more than just disable comments, you can retroactively delete all comments. You do this by choosing Comments from the administrative area, then clicking the checkbox to select all, and choosing Move to Trash from the dropdown menu.

If you’d rather not go through the administrative area to delete your WordPress comments, you can do it with a plugin. The Disable Comments plugin will let you do just that with a few simple clicks. It also lets you selectively disable comments on media, posts and pages. 

Bulk Disable Comments on Pages and Posts in WordPress 

If this isn’t a fresh WordPress installation and you’ve had pages and posts that have allowed comments for some time, you may want to go back and retroactively disable them. The good news is that you don’t have to load up every page and post by hand and do it manually.

Simply go to Posts > All Posts to see all of your articles. From here, select the checkbox to the left of Title to choose all your posts, then from the dropdown menu directly above, choose Edit, then click Apply. From here, you’ll be able to handle bulk actions which include things like turning off comments, changing authors and so on. This method works for bulk allowing/disallowing comments on pages and posts. 

Disable Comments on Specific Pages or Posts in WordPress

To disable comments on certain WordPress posts or pages, just go to Pages > All Pages in the WordPress administration area. Then, simply hover your mouse over the name of the page until you see the Edit / Quick Edit / Trash and View options. Click on Edit.

On the new page that loads, you’ll see three vertical dots. Click that to open your options menu, and from here, you’ll see a section marked Document Panels. Check or uncheck the Discussion box to show a checkbox under it called Allow Comments. Check this if you wish to allow them, or uncheck it if you don’t. It’s that simple! Don’t forget to click Update to save your changes!

This process also works for turning off comments on posts, pages or custom post types. 

Removing “Comments are Closed” from your WordPress

One of the most common “side effects” of some WordPress installations is that WordPress doesn’t correctly check the status of comments. It might still display existing comments or show “comments are closed” on your WordPress pages or posts.

Every WordPress installation has its own particular quirks and issues, so it may take a developer knowledgeable in WordPress to remove the “Comments are Closed” or handle other issues with regards to comments displaying or not displaying.

Removing this text from WordPress generally requires that a programmer or developer be knowledgeable in WordPress and editing the code within the theme or core WordPress files. Fortunately, having a knowledgeable, experienced and helpful WordPress developer on your side is easier than ever with WPDandy. 

Editing WordPress Comments Code

By working with WPDandy programmers and developers, you’ll be able to make short work of your WordPress to-do list. When working together, you’ll be assigned a developer who will work with you one on one to tackle your most pressing WordPress comments and any other issues. Beyond just helping you wrangle your comments, our talented development team can also help you with all types of management and maintenance needs regarding WordPress.

Whether you need help managing your WordPress theme or you need ongoing maintenance to ensure that your WordPress site is continually functioning as best as it can, there’s no better option than the talented developers at WPDandy. Through an administrative plugin that’s easily installed in your WordPress dashboard, you can correspond one on one with your personal developer, assigning tasks, exchanging files, clarifying discussions and more. It’s an easy way to give yourself the freedom to focus on growing your blog and building your website. Stop getting bogged down with constant administrative tasks and put our knowledgeable programmers to work for you, all for one affordable monthly fee.

If you’re ready to take the next step toward WordPress success, contact WPDandy today. Let us work with you to take your WordPress blog to the next level and help keep spammers out of your comments while helping to encourage discussion and building a loyal legion of fans and customers.