Are you looking to disable the comment section on your WordPress blog? If yes, continue reading this guide.
Today, you will know how to disable and delete comments from individual posts and pages, or even from media attachments. I will show you how to achieve this using or without using the plugin.
The comment section of your website is there to help the readers interact with you and each other. However, there are moments when you would want to disable the comment section of your website. That’s why I’m going to show you how to disable the comment section on WordPress.
Let’s begin with our guide.
Why Disable Comments in WordPress?
There are many reasons why you want to disable comments on your WordPress website. I have listed a few of them below:
- It can be very beneficial in terms of spam prevention. Not all your visitors are real; many of them are bad internet bots that tried to target the comment section. You can prevent this spam by disabling the comment section.
- It also helps in saving time because moderating and responding to every comment can be time-consuming, especially if you have a big website with too many posts and pages.
- There are many pages on your website that don’t need comments. For example, about us, contact, privacy policy, and other pages. So, it’s better to disable the comment section on these pages.
- Sometimes you don’t want comments on specific pages like announcements, notices, or any promotional pages.
- Also, business websites make the decision to disable comment sections on their blogs because they are just creating blogs to generate traffic; they don’t need responses on them.
Disable Comment Section on WordPress Without Using Plugin
The first method to disable comments on WordPress is without using any plugin. By default, WordPress provides a few settings that allow you to disable the comment section in different places on WordPress.
As an example, it allows you to disable comments on selected posts, bulk posts, future posts, existing posts, and even on media files. Below, I have listed steps you’ll need to follow in order to disable comments on different places throughout your site:
1. Disable Comments On a Specific Post or Page
Occasionally, you may want to disable comments on selected posts or pages, and thankfully, WordPress allows you to do this by following a few simple steps:
To begin with, you must navigate to “Posts > All Posts” or “Pages > All Pages,” which are both available on the left sidebar, as shown in the above image.
The next step is to open any post or page on your website and click on the “Edit” option. You will now need to navigate to the “Discussion” section, which is located in the right sidebar, uncheck the “Allow comments” box, and update the post as shown in the image above.
2. Disable Comments On Posts or Pages in Bulk
It is time to learn how to disable comments on multiple posts or pages at once (without having to open each one individually). For this, you simply need to follow the steps we’re sharing below;
Navigate to “Posts > All Posts or Pages > All Pages” available on the left sidebar, as shown in the above image. Then, select the posts by clicking on the checkbox and click on the “Edit” option and then “Apply”.
Upon clicking on the “Apply” button, you will see the following options as shown in the above image. Here, you will need to select “Do not allow” from the drop-down menu under the “Comment” heading.
As soon as you update the settings, you will see that the comment section has been removed from the post.
3. Disable Comments on All Future Posts or Pages
In case you want to disable the comment section on all future posts or pages, WordPress has a default setting that can do the job for you.
Additionally, by doing this, you will not need to open each new post or page to disable comments, as this will remove the comment section from all future posts and pages automatically.
You can do this by going to “Settings > Discussion” and unchecking the “Allow people to submit comments on new posts” box, as shown in the image above.
4. Disable Comments on Existing Posts or Pages
If you want to disable comments on all existing posts or pages, then you can do this through the same settings that we used above to disable comments from all posts.
Navigate to “Settings > Discussion” and check the box next to “Automatically close comments on posts older than _ days”. Also, you have to set the days to “0” so that on all published posts and pages, the comment section will get disabled.
5. Delete Existing Comments on the Site
Using the above methods, you are only able to disable comments on your posts and pages, but you are not able to delete them from your WordPress website.
If you want to delete all of the comments from the existing posts and pages, you simply need to navigate to “Comments” from the left sidebar, select all of the comments, then click on “Move to Trash” and then click “Apply.”
This will remove all the comments from the existing posts and pages.
6. Disable Comments on Media Files
It is also possible to disable comments on media files like images and GIFs. However, if you wish to do this, you must manually disable comments on each media attachment that has been uploaded.
You can do this by navigating to “Media > Library” and selecting the file from which you want to remove the comment section. After that, click on “Edit more details” as shown in the image above.
In the next step, you will have to uncheck the “Allow comments” checkbox on the “Discussion” tab and update the settings.
There is a chance that you will not be able to see the Discussion section since it is hidden by default. But you can display it by clicking on the “Screen Options” and selecting the “Discussion” checkbox.
Disable Comment Section on WordPress Using Plugin
Apart from manually disabling comments, you can also use a free WordPress plugin. You can find tons of plugins to do this job – but I recommend you use the Disable Comments plugin.
This plugin is trusted by more than 1 million WordPress blog owners to disable comments globally on the site or on individual posts, pages, and even media files.
To install this plugin, navigate to “Plugins > Add New” and search for “Disable Comments” in the search box and install and activate the plugin as shown in the above image.
Next, navigate to “Settings > Disable Comments”. This will open many settings for comments.
In the next screen, you will get the option to both disable comments globally from the site or from posts, pages, media, and projects. As per your requirements, you can select the option.
Final Words
Throughout this blog post, I have outlined the top techniques for disabling comments in WordPress. With these steps, you should now be able to easily disable any and all unwanted comments on your site. And I hope that this blog post has taught you something new about WordPress customization.
If you have any additional questions related to disabling comments, we would be more than happy to answer them. Your feedback is always valuable and appreciated – so thank you for taking the time to read this post!
